Composers can increase exposure – and income – by promoting orchestral versions of chamber compositions. But orchestras usually employ conductors; and when the arrangement is of a score with many textual intricacies and shifts of tempo, the challenges to conductorless ensembles are formidable.

That hasn’t prevented some very successful recordings in this repertory, as with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in the early years of CD. Ensemble Resonanz describes its principal cello, Jean-Guihen Queyras, as ‘artistic director’ and any quarrels one might have with these performances are in the sphere of interpretation. The playing is unfailingly distinguished and well-balanced texturally, allowing for the degree to which the recording offers extremes of dynamics that might not be apparent in a live acoustic. It’s one of those things that the disc appears so soon after the outstanding version of Schoenberg’s tone-poem by the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra under Heinz Holliger (ZZT, 2/14). The 22 players of Ensemble Resonanz are polished to a fault but less successful at conveying the full rawness and intensity of the music’s dramatic profile. Is it the absence of a controlling baton that creates a sense of collective restraint at points where a conductor might opt for something more forceful?

As for the Lyric Suite: Berg himself arranged the second, third and fourth movements for string orchestra, and Theo Verbey’s versions of the remaining three work well. The performance can scarcely fail to reflect something of the original score’s intimate expressiveness but here again a degree of gentility, of seeking out lyricism at the expense of drama, affects the result.