On November 14, 2025, Accentus Music releases an exciting new album of Carl Orff’s famous Carmina Burana in a groundbreaking live recording conducted by internationally acclaimed German conductor and chief conductor of the featured Orquesta de Valencia, Alexander Liebreich.
The recording was captured in concert in mid 2024 by the meticulous and multiple award-winning Accentus Music label under its director, Paul Smaczny, at the Palau de la Música in Valencia, and brings the orchestra together with soloists Sara Blanch, Joaquín Asiáin and André Baleiro, as well as the Orfeón Pamplonés choir and the Valencian Escolanía de Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados childrens’ choir.
2025 marks the 130th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
A special feature of the release are the detailed liner notes, which include an in-depth and nuanced discussion between Alexander Liebreich (who himself is of Moravian-Jewish heritage), and the eminent German philosopher, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, about interpreting and immersing oneself in such a work, which is both wildly popular around the world while remaining somewhat controversial and not often performed in Germany, having been premiered in Frankfurt 1937 and first rejected by the Reich Chamber of Music but later used by the regime as propaganda due to its broad appeal. They exchange ideas on the value of recording and performing such “symbolic works”, today, as well as the notion of “Gesamtkunstwerk” with regard to the success of Carmina Burana around the world, and the need for a nuanced and contextual understanding of music.
“Carmina Burana works as a creative experiment, a unique kind of “Gesamtkunstwerk“ that dramatically combines three different historic languages with dances, verses and songs.
For over 50 years, I approached this work with both sceptical distance and an enthusiastic closeness. Ultimately, it was the Mediterranean energy and sensuality of my beloved Orquesta de Valencia, which opened and built for me a convincing and even thrilling bridge for this music between Bavaria and Spain. With this, I walked alongside Orff’s spirit of historical humanism.” – Aexander Liebreich
The live video recording of the concert is also be available as a 4K video via Vimeo On Demand (rent only, 72 hour time period).
Carl Orff
Carmina Burana
Orquesta de València
Alexander Liebreich, conductor
Orfeón Pamplonés
Escolanía de Nuestra Señora des los Desamparados
Sara Blanch, soprano
Joaquín Asiáin, baritone
André Baleiro, baritone