Older readers may associate the Lucerne Festival Strings with Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Rudolf Baumgartner but under Australian-born Daniel Dodds the ensemble has been building a decidedly contemporary discography for Sony Classical. Here, an engaging performance of Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings sits at the heart of a singular miscellany whose title takes its cue from the first offering, Schumann’s Bilder aus Osten, Op 66 (1849). Written for piano four-hands, the six pieces emerge transformed in an unjustly forgotten, thoroughly idiomatic arrangement by Mendelssohn pupil Friedrich Hermann, which finds Dodds alert to every nuance. Next up is a contemporary transmogrification by Martin Braun of the string quartet movement Dvořák himself mined for the more familiar Romance in F minor for violin and strings.

The Lucerne group is around 20-strong. Its occasional penchant for choppy articulation never gets seriously out of hand in the Serenade and the airy, spacious soundstage lends enchantment, whether or not dictated in part by covid restrictions. The Concert Hall of KKL Lucerne was the venue for a recording made in June 2020. The central Scherzo and Larghetto fourth movement are kept on the move. Jakub Hr≤≈a and the Prague Philharmonia (Supraphon, 4/07) are more relaxed and possibly more affecting throughout.

The remaining items, while beautifully done, lack any obvious easterly orientation. Schumann’s ‘Abendlied’ (‘Evening Song’) comes from the Op 85 piano duet pieces ‘for children of all ages’. Johan Svendsen’s (literally) muted string-orchestra realisation is a gem as rendered, exquisitely phrased and not at all rushed. The final work, Schreker’s early Scherzo, is as originally scored. Not knowing the music’s identity, you might credit Korngold in neoclassical mode. Mendelssohn and Beethoven are in the frame at the start, later Dvořák. An academic study composed as early as 1900, it has been recorded before. Rival versions include one from the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under John Axelrod as part of a collection devoted to ‘Franz Schreker and His Students’ (Nimbus, 1/08). It falls to a booklet note by Stephan Schwarz-Peters to make sense of Sony Classical’s road map.