Having reviewed a less than satisfactory Carmina Burana recording last year, it’s heartening to report on something more considered. Just to be clear, what we’re dealing with here is the original monophonic repertory whose poetic texts Carl Orff set 600 years later, augmented by a number of related sources from the same period. The will to place a famous repertory within a broader, less familiar context is this recital’s greatest strength. Like René Clemencic in the recording just mentioned, they intersperse music with spoken passages. Try as I might, I still find this unconvincing in recording (I’m sure it works much better live) because the mannered style of declamation wears thin with repeated listening. At one point, however, the performers begin a passage at the pitch of speech, slowly modulating to a higher, more precisely tuned sound approximating a chord: despite the obvious control, this achieves a certain ecstatic quality. All in all, La Reverdie avoid the drunken tomfoolery of the Clemencic Consort and the musical performances are polished, with an easy communicativeness. The performance style is always adaptable and not infrequently the result is nearly indistinguishable from the more cultured polyphony of the time: a reminder, again, that the Carmina Burana are not exclusively ribald and indecent, that there is heartfelt piety too; and that these entertainments were not devised by uncouth drunks but by educated clerics with a taste for occasional subversion.