This is the sixth recording of Schoenberg's Brahms orchestration to be issued since Simon Rattle's (EMI, 6/86). If only Schoenberg's 'real' music were so popular! After all, much of it has the ebullience and the touch of extravagance that makes the Brahms orchestration a winner. The third movement, in particular, acquires an epic quality that might have made Brahms himself shudder, but is hugely exciting.
It's not long since the LSO recorded the piece under Neeme Jarvi (Chandos, 2/91) and they do a no less professional job for Geoffrey Simon. Until the finale, nevertheless, I found Simon's reading a bit short of rhythmic bite. The long first movement, in particular, flows along in a rather uneventful fashion, and JS's 1991 recommendation of Michael Tilson Thomas's BRSO performance (CBS) as front runner can probably still stand.
Simon's disc also contains the first recording of Luciano Berio's 1986 orchestration of Brahms's First Clarinet Sonata. I find this a far more doubtful enterprise than the Schoenberg, probably because the Op. 25 Quartet is symphonic chamber music in the grand manner, whereas the sonata is pure chamber music, and in no way a concerto in disguise. Berio's orchestration deprives the piano part of its essential rhythmic incisiveness, and deprives the whole work of that crucial polarity—clarinet, piano—that characterizes the original.
The recording doesn't help by wrapping the orchestra around the excellent soloist. In addition, the sound has an aura of artificial resonance without that last degree of definition that would serve the orchestral textures, especially those of the Schoenberg most effectively.'