The Kiev Camerata offers a fulsome rendition of Schoenberg’s Verklate Nacht in its “first” string orchestra version. This spare arrangement plays up the music’s sinewy core beneath its lush, shadowy exterior, and the Kiev players make the most of the work’s slithery counterpoint. Next comes a fleet and breezy rendition of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 with the Kiev musicians employing impressive ensemble smoothness and suavity. Finally, we’re offered Hans Stadlmair’s reduction of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony Adagio for 15 solo strings, whose legitimacy derives from the primarily string-based orchestration of the original. Although the introduction and first-subject material sound pretty much per usual (save for the thinner textures), when we come to what should be the horns’ emphatic statement of the main theme we find ourselves longing for the familiar orchestral timbres.
Taking it on its own terms, Stadlmair’s arrangement gives us an intensely emotional, late-romantic string work whose musical language hovers on the edges of atonality (a description that would fit Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen as well). Ultimately however, Stadlmair’s work cannot match Mahler’s instrumental ingenuity, and the spell is completely broken at the climax, where tremolo strings vainly try to recreate the raw terror of Mahler’s original. Credit is due to the Kiev Camerata for bringing off this flawed but fascinating arrangement with such obvious conviction. TNC’s package is capped with solid, well-balanced sound.
