There have been many recordings of Orff’s ever-popular Carmina Burana but relatively few of the chamber version. Orff made the arrangement himself with the idea that it would then be possible for schools and small music societies to perform it. He left the vocal parts untouched, soloists and chorus, but arranged the orchestration for two pianos and percussion. That is what Rupert Huber and his forces of SWR in Stuttgart have recorded here as part of SWR Music on the Hänssler label.

As the helpful note makes plain, the result is most distinctive, most of all because the SWR Vocal Ensemble sings with such knife-edge precision of ensemble and the recording allows every detail to be heard, not least from the piano and percussion. Less well served in the recording balance are the three soloists, who tend to be backwardly placed, and the extreme dynamic range of the recording makes it hard for them to be heard against the rest.

Not that it is too serious a flaw, when all three soloists are first-rate, notably the most important of them, the baritone Stephan Genz, who brings out the narrative with winning expressiveness. Outstanding too is the soprano, Lenneke Ruiten. Not only has she an aptly girlish voice, she attacks the fearsomely exposed high notes of the third big section, ‘Cour d’amours’, with supreme confidence and precision, achieving the beauty Orff had in mind with no suspicion of any upward swoop. The tenor, Christoph Genz, also copes very well with the difficulties of the falsetto writing in the roast swan episode of the second section, ‘In taberna’, aptly characterful in the grotesque way intended.

Altogether an excellent version of Orff’s chamber version likely to be attractive to those in schools and choral societies who have so regularly enjoyed performing Carmina Burana.