Dip Your Ears, No. 77 (Brahms via Schoenberg)

A.Schoenberg, 5 Orchestral Pieces, Brahms Quartet, Cello Concerto, Philharmonia, LSO / R.Craft / F. Sherry Naxos 557524

I love Schoenberg transcriptions of other composers’ works in part because they offer the gentlest insights into the work and ideas (and ideology) of Arnold Schoenberg and are often beautiful even to neophyte ears, possibly handing over the key to understanding more complex works of the composer. Even a beauty like Berg’s violin concerto (who could ever compose something ‘deliberately ugly’ for the “memory of an angel”?) must be appreciated slowly by most listeners… and I find that Webern’s and Schoenberg’s transcriptions help.

To offer along two such works – the rarely recorded Cello Concerto and the more often recorded Brahms Piano Quartet orchestration – a more challenging composition like the “Five Pieces for Orchestra” might be a fine idea to that end (if it doesn’t scare otherwise potential buyers away, which it just might), but why on earth is it placed first on this disc? Maybe the engineers don’t believe in my missionary theory… but in the last or even middle position I think more “accidental” listeners might have given it a fair shake. (As it is, it’s not exactly a definitive recording. Schoenberg fans know to look to Boulez/Sony – for detail – and Barenboim/Teldec – for lushness.)

Boulez, 5 Pieces, et al. Sony UK | DE | FR Barenboim, 5 Pieces, et al. Warner UK | DE | FR N.Järvi, Brahms PQ4t transcr. Chandos UK | DE | FR

I’ve never heard the Brahms Piano Quartet in Schoenberg’s orchestration played quite as beautifully as on Christoph Eschenbach’s RCA recording with the Houston Symphony (sadly out of print – coupled with Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions of BWV 552, BWV 654, and BWV 631). But this monumental work, nicknamed “Brahm’s Fifth Symphony”, is good to have on a budget disc in any performance. (The finest sounding currently available version is probably Neeme Järvi’s Chandos recording.) The Piano Quartet, Schoenberg thought, was too piano-heavy and he went about creating this phenomenally effective orchestration. The Piano Quartet itself is a transcription of Brahms’ own Sonata for Two Pianos (Dip Your Ears No.66) which, incidentally, sounds very symphonic. [I got confused: The Sonata was of course turned into the Piano Quintet, not the Quartet. Thanks for pointing it out.] If you like Brahms and big-boned romantic music, you will love this. If you absolutely want to avoid the “Five Pieces” (don’t!), you can also look for Robert Craft’s early Columbia recording of only Schoenberg-transcriptions recently reissued by Sony/BMG/RCA.

The cello concerto (cellist Fred Shelly Sherry), based on by Georg Matthias Monn's (1717 - 1750) such work, is a rare gem and alternatively available with Yo-Yo Ma on Sony under Ozawa. (I am not familiar at all with Mark Drobinsky’s recording on Gallo; I’ve not heard – but only heard good things about – the Ma recording.) It’s a C.P.E. Bach-ish concerto twice removed, romanticized, and re-assembled. Significantly altered, it makes for a wholly new, oddly familiar, even disorienting work with its basic idiom still (and hence “pleasantly”) that of its original creator. Cellists, even those otherwise allergic to anything ‘Schoenberg’, ought to have a look at this beauty for potential admission into their repertoire. (Not the least because I, selfishly, should like to hear it live, some time.)

This may altogether not be an overwhelming release (re-release, since all three pieces have been taken from Robert Craft’s Schoenberg recordings for the Koch label), but with fine music in an interesting program at a bargain price it is worth your attention.