History repeats itself.

Just over 100 years ago, following a period of pandemic and economic crisis, the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances) was founded by composer Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed performances by small forces of new music available. Works performed in the Society’s concerts reflected a range of the best of late 19th and early 20th century music, but nothing by Schoenberg himself. Most of the arrangements that have come down to us from the Society are for some combination of solo strings, a few solo winds, piano and harmonium. This sort of salon orchestra was often augmented by the liberal use of percussion, which can greatly enhance the range of colour the ensemble can produce.

In the last 20 years or so, these arrangements have seen a resurgence in popularity, and have become recognised as being artistically significant in their own right. While they, of course, do not have the power and range of the orchestral originals, they offer a more intimate view of the music, one that perhaps allows the creativity and artistry of the individual performers to shine through. In the age of Covid-19, these arrangements have new relevance.

Composers who have made varied arrangements of music by themselves or others include Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Elgar. More recently, we have had important arrangements by the Matthews brothers, Berio and Schnittke.

Schoenberg might be the most interesting example of a composer whose interest in arranging spanned almost the whole gamut of the art form. He both reduced large scores for small forces, and expanded chamber works for larger ones. Just as Mahler had transcribed string quartets by Beethoven and Schubert for string orchestra, Schoenberg made string orchestra versions of his own Second String Quartet and his sextet, Verklärte Nacht. His reductions of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Das Lied von der Erde are as faithful to the originals as they can possibly be given the limited forces, while his arrangements of Brahms’ G minor Piano Quartet and Strauss’s Emperor Waltz are much more interventionist, bordering on the provocative.

As we emerged from lockdown, it seemed to me that Schoenberg’s example at the Society for Private Musical Performance from 100 years ago was one we ought to remember. There didn’t seem any point in flooding the internet with hundreds of socially distanced performances of The Lark Ascending or The Four Seasons when we could focus on more distinctive work.

In this case, that meant a sequence of works exploring the themes of childhood, nature and the cycle of life which Mahler’s Fourth Symphony embodies so powerfully. By unifying the orchestration of the entire programme, I hoped we could create a sense of immersion for the entire concert – a sense of being in a single, richly evocative sound world from beginning to end.

Three of these pieces are reductions, like those Schoenberg did of Mahler’s songs, where my goal was to stay as true as possible to the original. The first of these was Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, for me the most beautiful expression of parental love in music. From Wagner’s evocation of birth, we move onto a child’s widening sense of the uncertainties of the world in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. My other reduction on the disc is of Mahler’s harrowing song Das irdische Leben (The Earthly Life) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which depicts a child starving to death: the child repeatedly begging for food, the desperate mother attempting to calm and comfort the child. Mahler conceived of this song as a dark mirror of Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life), the final movement of his Fourth Symphony which depicts the abundance of Heaven through the eyes of a child which ends the set.

Two of my arrangements on the album are, however, more interventionist. Both Schubert’s D minor String Quartet (Death and the Maiden) and his Trout Quintet have movements which are variations on his songs of the same names. Both of these songs fit our Mahler programme, so I thought we ought to find a way to integrate song and variation into a single coherent work. In the case of the Trout, I’ve alternated verses of Schubert’s song with variations of the quintet. Starting from a chamber work and a song, there was no orchestration for me to emulate, but Schubert’s writing is so effervescent that it was a joy to unleash all the colours of our small orchestra.

Death and the Maiden works a little differently. In this case, one hears my orchestration of the entire variation movement from Schubert’s quartet first, then Schubert’s song at the end. My work starts with string quartet, exactly as in Schubert’s original, but as it progresses, we find ourselves going deeper and deeper into an alien musical world. I’ve also been able to use the expanded forces to draw out some of the material that Schubert had to imply in the original. Once the Variations have run their rather terrifying course, the Lied begins. The introduction to the song substitutes a wheezing harmonium for Schubert’s piano. The effect is meant to be jarring – one shouldn’t quite know whether to scream or laugh. The Maiden begs Death to pass her over. Death declines, but assures her he is 'a friend'. That she will sleep softly in his arms.

Should we accept Death’s assurances? As the song finishes, we gradually realise that only a string quartet remains. Perhaps the horror has passed? And then, Mahler’s vision of Heavenly Life appears. For me (as, I believe, for Mahler and Schubert), it’s definitely not a matter of trying to convince the listener of a religious worldview. Fairy tales are supposed to give children a safe space in which to process and learn to live with difficult ideas. I hope this programme can do the same for listeners of many ages. In uncertain and difficult times, myth, fairy tales and art remind us to stay hopeful.

Kenneth Woods’s new release with the English Symphony Orchestra and April Fredrick – Visions of Childhood – is released today on Nimbus: https://orcd.co/_visionsofchildhood