Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, founded in 1918 to offer weekly new-music concerts to a knowledgeable audience, provides the launching point for this disc. The program consists mostly of arrangements presented by the Society–and even some of these can’t authoritatively be ascribed to Schoenberg (who may not have had anything at all to do with the transcriptions of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer and Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque). The piece that gets first billing, the brief Weihnachtsmusik (written after the Society’s disbanding), is little more than a homey if limp medley of “Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen” and “Silent Night”. The rest of the mix is odd, too. Mahler, Busoni, and Johann Strauss II make strange bedfellows, although imagining Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg playing these Strauss waltzes–as they did for a Society fundraiser–is entertaining. (And perhaps it’s evidence of an early peak for crossover?)
Even with these drawbacks, the small-scale program and the intimate ensembles evoke a time and place where new music was energetically presented and avidly consumed. Regardless of who is ultimately responsible for the Mahler transcriptions, it is a masterful display. Suggesting Mahler’s broad sweeps with so few materials (voice, string quintet, clarinet, piano, harmonium, and percussion) is an achievement. These fine instrumentalists, including the celebrated Arditti quartet, do the arrangements justice, although baritone Jean-Luc Chaignaud has a tendency to become nasal and strained at the top of his range, especially at the end of “Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld” and in “Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer”. (For those keeping track, the label counts this disc as Vol. 2 in its Arditti Edition.) The Busoni transcription is another winner: its expansive feeling isn’t cramped one bit by this small-group arrangement. The sound, however, is peculiar. While the top end is very clear and bright, the low is too thick and indistinct.
