Interesting though it is for Mahlerians (well moderately interesting, though less so for Schubertians or chamber music enthusiasts) this transcription of the D minor String Quartet is after all only a minor footnote to musical history, and I had not expected a second recording of it to arrive quite so soon, still less a second recording that offers several footnotes to that footnote. Mahler never wrote out his arrangement; it exists only as a marked-up copy of a printed edition of Schubert's score. The version recorded by Jeffrey Tate on EMI uses an edition of those markings prepared by David Matthews and Donald Mitchell, but since some of the markings are ambiguous (you find this boring? how do you suppose I feel?) the two editors have had to make their own decisions on a number of points. Jean-Jacques Kantorow presumably disagrees with some of those decisions, since his performance, we are told, differs in a number of textual details from Tate's. Now I cannot pretend to have looked for these variants very assiduously, but I have noticed only one that makes a conspicuous difference to the sound— unlike Tate, Kantorow does not use mutes in the repeated sections of the theme of the slow movement—and that strikes me as a change for the worse.
No, what really matters is whether Kantorow can convince you, as Tate on the whole can, that there is some point in playing a string quartet on a string orchestra. In an attempt, presumably, to put back some of the expressive nuance that is inevitably lost when a line conceived for a single violin is played by several, he takes the slow movement at a tempo perilously close to lethargy and nowhere near Schubert's marking of con moto: it is three whole minutes longer than Tate's version, and feels it. His Scherzo is heavy-footed (so is Tate's, but there is some spring to its gait) and in the Trio his players cannot (as Tate's can) make up in beauty of tone for the intimacy and charm that this arrangement drives out. The outer movements are better, but the Auvergnat players are less successful than the ECO in avoiding that scrawny whiteness of tone that is always a risk when multiple violins play in high positions. Kantorow's version does, of course, have a much more substantial fill-up than Tate's (who offers, appropriately but a touch stingily, only a finely sung account by Ann Murray of the song on which the quartet's slow movement is based), his account of the Shostakovich is a decent one, if not so intense as either Bigg's or Turovsky's (Chandos), so it might be a welcome bonus to anyone buying the Schubert/Mahler as a curiosity (I cannot honestly believe it to be anything more, unless it is superbly played) and wanting value for money as well.
Bigg's account of the two Shostakovich/ Barshai arrangements sounds crisper on CD than it did on LP. For sheer histrionic fervour Turovsky's Chandos readings have something of an edge over Bigg's (and I myself prefer the gutty sound of Turovsky's markedly smaller and very vividly recorded string group) but Bigg's have the advantage of being coupled together, Turovsky's are paired with the two Shostakovich piano concertos conducted by the composer's son and played (splendidly in the case of No. 2, rather ruthlessly in No. 1) by his grandson.'