Most recordings of Carmina Burana differ only in ritzy soloists and top-notch engineering from the hearty enthusiasm of the amateur performances that rattle town-hall slates across the globe every Saturday night. This is perhaps as it should be given Orff’s educational commitments and the designedly populist appeal of the work’s melodic minimalism.

True to form, Günter Wand offers something different, a textural maximalism which cherishes the felicitous details of Orff’s blatantly Stravinskian scoring. ‘O Fortuna’ makes the customary impact not through weight of numbers but by the maintenance of a true, expectant hush through its middle section and a balance that favours the gong (NDR’s engineering matches Wand’s conducting in its observant, unexaggerated honesty). You can hear the fat drip from the swan in the xylophone refrains of ‘Olim lacus’. The flute solo that sets the tone for the ‘Cour d’amour’ rivals Rattle’s Emmanuel Pahud for L’après-midi languor – he ignores, as we must, the sharp oboe hovering nearby.

The vocal soloists are accurate but uningratiating. Best of them is Peter Binder’s fairly sober abbot and commensurately courtly lover, though he is still no match for Christian Gerhaher’s uncanny imitation of an airs de cour balladeer (for Rattle). Indeed, Rattle and Wand are united by their attempt to wring as much music from the piece as possible. Some of Rattle’s ear-catching details may pall on repetition, as Guy Rickards noted; Wand’s only miscalculation is an over-hasty ‘Blanziflor et Helena’ chorus. For a poshed-up, Saturday-night Carmina Burana, Previn and Muti (both also on EMI) press all the right buttons.