This is a fascinating slant on an effective arrangement, though the unhelpfully reverberant recording rather mitigates against total enjoyment. In this instance what more helps the effect is that tempos are kept up to speed, which serves to underline discernible parallels with Elgar’s Violin Concerto (premiered in 1910, two years after the Reger), especially the relationship of tutti to solo material and the violin-writing: try the closing minutes of the first movement. A more richly recorded alternative of Rudolf Kolisch’s chamber version by the excellent violinist Winfried Rademacher with the Linos Ensemble is very much slower, thus minimising those Elgarian parallels. Listen to 26'00" on the Capriccio CD or 21'32" on this new Oehms recording and you’ll hear what I mean.

Whichever way you hear it, Reger’s Concerto is a much-underrated work. Reger himself somewhat immodestly thought that he had extended the series of great concertos by Beethoven and Brahms. And there were some who would have agreed with him. Schoenberg reckoned Reger’s music deserved frequent exposure, primarily because, as he put it, Reger was a genius. I can’t argue with that, though those with little or no taste for bulky, thick-set chromaticism probably will. Kolisch’s chamber reworking of the Concerto for Schoenberg’s Association for Private Music Performance (scored for flute, clarinet, horn, harmonium, piano, and strings) sounds like a genuine labour of love. In fact it’s so skilfully wrought that for much of the time you’re hardly aware that reduced forces have been brought into play.

On the better-recorded Capriccio CD Rademacher performs beautifully, especially for in rapt closing pages of the slow movement, and the Linos Ensemble prove musically persuasive collaborators. But I prefer the swifter tempos chosen by Elena Denisova with the Gustav Mahler Ensemble under Alexei Kornienko, although I’m less taken with their interpretative approach overall, which strikes as less personal than that of their rival. Still, those faster speeds may well tip the balance for some listeners – they certainly help hold your attention – and if the sound isn’t a problem, Denisova and her collaborators could well provide the preferred option.