An ingenious piece of programming, and what might have been a valuable addition to the catalogue. As far as I can tell, this is the first ever commercially available recording of Berg's piano-duet reduction of Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony, at least in the United Kingdom.
This work seems to have been subjected to all manner of arrangements: Schoenberg himself made a two-piano reduction and a version for full orchestra, and Webern arranged it for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano in 1923. Berg completed his in 1915 and, during the process, wrote to Schoenberg: ''I am really revelling in the beauty of the work itself. Only now am I really getting to know it and understand it''. Well, I am certainly grateful to Berg for the clarification his version affords of the work's dizzying polyphonic complexity. However, should this piece fall so easily upon the ear? A recent recording of the Webern arrangement similarly presented the work as a comfortable armchair experience. Gone is the grit and wild, physical energy of the original.
The accompanying notes suggest that the difficulty of performing Berg's arrangement has prevented its publication. It holds no terrors for the Paratores whose co-ordination is exemplary, but, especially as the reduction further reminds us of the model of Liszt's Piano Sonata, a little more bravura in their playing would have been welcome. In the exposition particularly, ff attack is tentative, and handling of ritardandos cautious. The Cologne Radio engineering does them no favours either—it sounds as if it was recorded in a padded cell.
Positive advocacy is also missing from this version of Schoenberg's orchestration of the Brahms Quartet. Recorded in 1979, the sound is veiled, cramped and hissy compared to either the Rattle (EMI—coupled with Mahler's Tenth) or Tilson Thomas (CBS) versions. It is, as a performance and a recording, no more, and no less, than a second-rate radio broadcast. I should confess at this point, that, despite Schoenberg's obvious admiration for Brahms, the result strikes me as little more than an interesting curiosity. The dimensions of the original Quartet may be broad, but to assume it is a budding symphony is surely misguided, and if the assumption is correct, it only goes to show how wise was Brahms's decision to wait a further 15 years before writing one. I agree that, in the early stages of the work, Schoenberg's echt-Brahmsian orchestration is remarkable, but the flab that some of the melody and rhythms acquire in the fleshing out process often makes for unwieldy results. I really can't believe Brahms would have tolerated anything as banal as what becomes of the Andante's central march, in a symphony. To say nothing of the Rondo alla Zingarese finale, where, with a full complement of twentieth-century orchestral effects suddenly unleashed, the athletic whirl of the original is transformed into a stampede of outsize gipsies whose mobility has been seriously impaired by an overdose of Tokay.
Be that as it may (or may not, as I am probably in a minority), Wakasugi conducts a competent, somewhat characterless account. Phrasing is dull in the first movement, and rhythms stiff in the last. Rattle almost persuades you of the arrangement's merits, with an authentic Brahmsian glow, until the end of the slow movement and the succeeding shock of the new. Tilson Thomas's version was not greeted with much enthusiasm by AS in these columns. With a drier sound and less expansive manner, he points up the alien element right from the start. But, from where I stand, a performance that does not try to convince you that this is Brahms's 'No. 0' gets my vote.
The essay in the booklet for this new recording claims Wakasugi's to be the first ever recording of the Brahms/Schoenberg. This is, of course, fiction. Robert Craft on CBS (nla) was first into the arena in the 1960s, since when several others have been and gone.'