The scale and richness of Bruckner’s String Quintet have encouraged a number of arrangements for string orchestra over the years, and even a version for chamber ensemble, but this is the first time that the work has received an arrangement for full orchestra. In an essay in the CD booklet, Gerd Schaller acknowledges that the Quintet stands apart from the composer’s symphonies but felt inspired by the symphonic essence of the music to create an orchestration for strings, double woodwinds, two trumpets, three trombones and timpani. There are precedents for such a treatment, of course, notably Schoenberg’s transcription of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No 1 and, more recently, Kenneth Woods’s orchestration of the same composer’s Piano Quartet No 2. Unlike both Schoenberg and Woods, however, Schaller has retained the original chamber-music character of the work, using the additional forces mainly to add colour and contrast, rather than bringing forth a fundamentally new presentation of the score. In addition to the Quintet’s usual four movements, Schaller has also included Bruckner’s brief Intermezzo (originally conceived as a replacement for the Quintet’s Scherzo) as the fourth movement, making a five-moment piece in total.

There’s no doubt that Schaller, who has recorded a full cycle of the symphonies as well as a making a completion of the unfinished finale of the Ninth Symphony, is deeply sympathetic to Bruckner’s music. I’m not convinced, however, that the gain from hearing the String Quintet in an orchestrated form outweighs the loss of the original chamber-music conception. Although it could be argued that the closing bars of the first and last movements benefit from the extra weight of the full orchestra, the additional instrumentation elsewhere often sounds superfluous and unidiomatic. In the case of the Adagio in particular, one of Bruckner’s most inspired movements, I found myself yearning for the simplicity and radiance of the scoring for string orchestra.

The disc also includes a performance of the Overture in G minor, one of Bruckner’s earliest orchestral works. It’s an attractive piece that was first recorded by Henry Wood as early as 1937, although it’s rather fallen out of favour in recent years. Schaller’s interpretation is well played but the versions by Chailly (Decca, 1/90) and especially Skrowaczewski (Oehms Classics) seem to me more effective in communicating the spirit of the piece. The recording of both works, made in Prague Radio Hall, is noticeably drier than the sound of Schaller’s earlier recordings of Bruckner’s music made in the reverberant Ebrach Abbey.