More than 50 recordings of Orff’s lusty scenic cantata are currently available, dwarfing those of all his other pieces put together. It is such a showpiece that its musical significance – its use of repetition as a structural principle was years ahead of Cage and Harrison and decades before minimalism – is too often overlooked.

This rush-release is a composite of three performances in the last days of 2004. Rattle may not be an obvious choice for this work but he directs a fascinating account, electrifyingly played and sung, that – aided by some acutely balanced engineering – casts a keen light on the over-familiar, catching perhaps a hint of what it might have been like to hear it new in the 1930s. Some of his tempi are arresting and I must confess I took a few hearings to come to terms with them. Right from the outset in ‘O, Fortuna’ the speed is upbeat and ‘In Taberna’ near took my breath away. When one reads the text set, it all makes sense, and orchestra and chorus are with him all the way.

So, too, are the soloists – not least Christian Gerhaher, hilarious as the bullish Abbas Cucaniensis. Though memorable in concert I have a doubt or two how well it will wear with repetition on disc. Compare Gerhaher for histrionics with Svanholm (a tenor, here revert- ing to his original baritone) for Schmidt-Isserstedt in 1954, which also featured a young, overstretched Elisabeth Soderstrom; Rattle’s Sally Matthews is much surer.

Nonetheless, this account avoids the over-refinement of the leaden (though much-praised) Thielemann and has more life than Leitner (who had the composer’s imprimatur). I would still choose Frühbeck de Burgos, with the radiant Lucia Popp but Rattle’s is a fine alternative.