Perhaps it is unfair to wonder as to the point of this programme, but I can’t help asking myself what useful light Felix Mottl’s orchestration sheds on Schubert’s wonderful F minor Fantasie for piano duet, or Webern’s instrumentation of the six-minute miniature Deutsche Tanze penned for piano solo and lasting in all less than eight minutes. However, the Grand Duo (again for duet) is arguably so orchestral in nature that Joachim was probably justified in giving it, and skilfully, this fuller instrumental clothing. The impressively named American S’s string section could be stronger, but their playing of this transcription under Leon Botstein is generally sympathetic to the music’s melodic richness and rhetorical grandeur. Even so, the conductor’s rhythm is capricious – not least in the first movement, taken rather fast for Allegro moderato – and the overall effect lightweight. Indeed, the work does not convince as a symphony, although that was undoubtedly Joachim’s intention since Schumann thought it was meant to be one and at one time scholars, including Sir Donald Tovey, held the same view.
Botstein’s account of the Fantasie starts unpromisingly, too slowly and without the necessary melodic subtlety. Mottl was a gifted musician, and his transcription is imaginative, but its sound is surprisingly un-Schubertian (closer to Berlioz and including a harp part) and I cannot think that many people will want to listen to it often, even in a performance better than this one, where tempos fluctuate greatly and the result is too episodic. The Webern arrangements are much more convincing, indeed charming, and affectionately played with a reduced string section.'