Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
L’arrangeur arrangé
First Chamber Symphony Op. 9 (1906 arr. Webern 1922)
15 Gedichte aus Das Buch der hängenden Gärten Op. 15 (1908-9, arr. Howard Burrell 2007)
Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16 (1909, arr. composer 1920)
Maria Schellenberg (mezzo-soprano)
Thomas Tacquet (piano)
Orchestre Les Métamorphoses/Amaury du Closel
rec. 2023/24, Institute Goethe de Paris; Grange de Saint-Leu, Val d’Oise; Meudon, Hauts de Seine, Paris
German texts included
Hortus 833 [62]

Some composers will have no truck with arrangements and transcriptions; others have no problem with them. Schoenberg was one of the latter. His orchestrations of Bach on Stokowski-like lines may be out of fashion, but his version of Brahms’s G minor piano quartet has become popular and is even sometimes included alongside recordings of Brahms’s acknowledged symphonies. In relation to his own work, he transcribed his Verklärte Nacht and First Chamber Symphony for larger forces and his Five Orchestral Pieces for smaller ones; he sanctioned the first of the arrangements we have here and made the third.

The First Chamber Symphony is a work on the threshold of Schoenberg’s free atonal period and is bursting with ideas, most of them Schoenberg’s own but including versions of Brünnhilde’s theme from Götterdämmerung and a passage from Mahler’s seventh symphony, which he must have seen in draft as it had not yet been performed. The original version of the First Chamber Symphony was for an ensemble of fifteen instruments. In 1922 Webern arranged it for the same ensemble as in Pierrot Lunaire: flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Webern does this with great skill, in particular making something of the use of the piano, though he cannot retain all the original interweaving lines. Rather surprisingly, the work succeeds in this version.

The song cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens setting poems by Stefan George has been rather overshadowed by Pierrot Lunaire, the expressionist work par excellence. However, it comes from the same period. Schoenberg had set George before, notably in the voice part he added to the last two movements of his second string quartet. The Hanging Garden poems recount an unsuccessful love affair, though the setting and much of the detail remain vague. Here it is given in a version by Howard Burrell for the same Pierrot Lunaire ensemble that Webern used for the First Chamber Symphony. Schoenberg was not a natural pianist and his piano writing can be thick and clogged, so the use of additional players opens out the writing and makes the work more immediately accessible. Maria Schellenberg sings eloquently.

Schoenberg wrote the original version of his Five Orchestral Pieces in 1909 for a very large orchestra, with quadruple woodwind plus that rare bird, a contrabass clarinet, six horns and four each of trumpets and trombones. In 1949 he revised the score for a normal sized orchestra, with just triple woodwind, four horns and so on. One of these two version is what we normally hear, and If you know both, you will know that the original version is much the better: Schoenberg was right to require those extra instruments and the work’s colours are much more clearly presented with them. However, in between these two, in 1920 he made a further reduced version for chamber orchestra, which is what we have here. There is only single woodwind and one horn, but he adds a harmonium and a piano to the small string group. When the piano has to substitute for two muted trombones or five of the six horns, you know that you are not really getting a fair representation of what he originally intended. This is most evident in the third piece, Farben (colours), which is based on a single chord presented in two alternating orchestrations with occasional interjections from other players. Schoenberg’s shimmering colours become penny plain. And in the other pieces the sudden huge climaxes lack power because of the small forces. This a shame because the performers play superbly well, with a natural feeling for the idiom which is most welcome, but with such small forces they can only give a sketch of the work. I think this version has to be considered only a stopgap; it was undertaken by the composer to get at least some hearing for his work in the difficult conditions after the end of the first World War. However, it does have a curiosity value.

So here we have two successful transcriptions and one which is more a document of its time, all well realized. The recording is good. The booklet is in French and German and has the German texts of the George poems but there are no English versions of any of this material. The track list is hiding near the end of the booklet. This is a disc for committed Schoenbergians.

Stephen Barber

Availability: Editions Hortus