Let me say straight away that for all its merits, and notably rich, spacious and wide-range recording (though with choral pianissimos atmospheric rather than sharply etched) Previn's new Vienna Carmina burana is not really a match for his earlier LSO version for EMI. Only in the male Tavern chorus of Part 2 (track 14) does the swagger of the earlier performance return and the closing ''Ave formosissima'', sung slowly and with much grandiloquence, is very impressive. Elsewhere there are disappointments, and there is not the same degree of spontaneous thrust.
The soloists are more uneven than before, with the tenor sounding rather strained in his ''Song of the roasted swan''. The soprano, Barbara Bonney, however, is very appealing in her portrayal of ''The girl in the red tunic'' (in the ''Cour d'Amours'' sequence), and gently sensuous in the delicious ''In trutina mentis dubia'', but her final submission (track 23) is rather shrill. In the first part of the work Previn conjures some lovely quiet singing from the Vienna Boys, but in their exuberant expression of uninhibited sexual fervour ''Oh! Oh! Oh! I am bursting out all over'', for all their vigour they are no match for the Boys of St Clement Danes Grammar School who positively relish the overflowing expression of their pubescent yearnings. Here, the Vienna youngsters are not helped by the rather gruff contribution of the baritone, Anthony Michaels-Moore.
Needless to say, there is some fine playing from the VPO remarkably its first recording of the work—and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir often sings stirringly, but overall this does not have the extra excitement one would expect from a live recording.'