This disc provides a generous helping of music for string orchestra, and will appeal to admirers of the Academy's distinctive style, even though none of the performances ranks as an outright first choice. Nor, for that matter, do the accounts of Verklarte Nacht and Metamorphosen on the only other CD to couple them, from the English String Orchestra under William Boughton on full-price Nimbus.
Marriner's Schoenberg begins imposingly, very slow in tempo but warm in tone; yet as the performance proceeds a certain lack of rapport between players and music emerges. Attack is not always sufficiently alert, and in the later stages extremes of tempo and a propensity for anticipating and exaggerating the various nuances marked in the score undermine the music's natural flow. Metamorphosen is more successful, with majestic fullness of tone at the main climax and a more effective handling of tempo fluctuation, although comparison with Herbert von Karajan and the BPO (DG) in both works suggests that the ASMF's expressiveness never quite achieves the concentrated intensity proper to this music.
Transfer to CD brings a good spread to the sound, though one is conscious of the relatively flat perspective, and of brightness turning to glare in the more exposed lines of Webern's powerful miniatures.'