What at first glance appears to be a fairly standard selection of some of the best known works of the Second Viennese School, is in fact anything but. For the performances here by the Belgian group Het Collectief of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and First Chamber Symphony, and Berg’s Piano Sonata and the Adagio from his Chamber Concerto, are all of chamber arrangements.
Originally for string sextet, Verklärte Nacht was rescored in the 1930s for piano trio by Eduard Steuermann, the pianist who gave the first performances of a number of Schoenberg’s works, while in 1924 it had been Anton Webern who rescored the Chamber Symphony for the quintet of two winds, two strings and piano that Schoenberg had employed in his melodrama Pierrot Lunaire. Berg himself made the version for violin, clarinet and piano of the central movement of his Chamber Concerto; only the reworking of his sonata for the Pierrot quintet, made at Het Collectief’s request by the Brussels-based composer Tim Mulleman, lacks a direct connection with Schoenberg and his circle.
