Two pianos, a celesta, a thundering percussion section, three international soloists, and two full choruses. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Jader Bignamini went big on their new live recording of Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana,’ out June 26 on PENTATONE. The duet “Tempus est iocundum” arrives today as a single.
The recording captures the immense scale and theatrical power of one of the most electrifying works of the 20th century. Soprano Chen Reiss, countertenor Reginald Mobley and baritone Andrzej Filończyk join the Detroit-based vocal ensemble Audivi and the Detroit Opera Youth Chorus across the project.
Orff built ‘Carmina Burana’ from 13th-century manuscripts found at the German monastery Benediktbeuern Abbey, turning the irreverent poetry of medieval students and clerics into a monumental scenic cantata. From the iconic opening chorus “O Fortuna” through exuberant dances, tavern scenes and courtly love interludes, the work explores fate, desire and human experience through elemental rhythms and striking orchestration.
The piece returns again and again to a single image. As Andrew Kohler writes in the album’s liner essay, the collection opens with the Wheel of Fate, an inexorable cycle of luck and tragedy that becomes the subject of the opening and closing chorus, “O Fortuna.” That motif binds together the work’s contrasting worlds of humor, satire, sensuality and spiritual reflection.
“Recording Carmina Burana with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a live concert setting was an unforgettable experience,” Bignamini shares. “The power of the music, combined with the artistry of the DSO and the strength of human voices, created something truly extraordinary in the hall. Performing this work with two choruses and three outstanding vocal soloists gave the piece an immense scale, grand, dramatic, and deeply emotional.”
He continues, “For a conductor, Carmina Burana demands total engagement. It is music sustained by connection, between conductor, musicians, singers, and audience. In a live recording, that connection feels especially immediate, shaped by every nuance of sound and silence. This recording captures not only a performance but a shared artistic journey. The result is thrilling.”
The orchestra recorded the work live at Orchestra Hall in Detroit in November 2025, and the performance crackles with the immediacy and visceral force of a room full of musicians firing together. The release follows the DSO’s acclaimed recording of Wynton Marsalis’s ‘Blues Symphony,’ which arrived on PENTATONE in March 2025.
Tracklist:
“O Fortuna”
“Fortune plango vulnera”
“Veris leta facies”
“Omnia Sol temperat”
“Ecce gratum”
“Tanz”
“Floret silva nobilis”
“Chramer, gip die varwe mir”
“Reie”
“Were diu werlt alle min”
“Estuans interius”
“Olim lacus colueram”
“Ego sum abbas”
“In taberna quando sumus”
“Amor volat undique”
“Dies, nox et omnia”
“Stetit puella”
“Circa mea pectora”
“Si puer cum puellula”
“Veni, veni, venias”
“In trutina”
“Tempus est iocundum”
“Dulcissime”
“Ave formosissima”
“O Fortuna” (reprise)