This is the kind of production that makes me feel old. It’s not just that there are now more recordings of Erwin Stein’s reduction of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony than once competed for pride of place in the parent work. It’s also a matter of attitude. While Oxalys’s programme evokes chamber-scale concerts given by Arnold Schoenberg’s subscription-only “Society for Private Musical Performances” in January 1921, nostalgic warmth plays second fiddle to a tensile brilliance very much of our own time. Then again, if the likes of Lorin Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic (Sony, 3/85) sound merely old hat, the Belgian group’s vivid, sporty, stripped-down miniaturisation may be just the ticket. The sonorities are pungent, the balances sometimes idiosyncratic, the detail closely observed. No question here of exploiting a big acoustic space to inflate and soften what is an arrangement for solo string quintet (including double bass), flute doubling piccolo, oboe doubling cor anglais, clarinet doubling bass clarinet, piano, harmonium and percussion.

Laure Delcampe sings freshly both here and in the coupling, a comparative rarity in any form although, even more than in the Mahler, the opulence of Schoenberg’s sumptuous orchestral texture would seem part and parcel of the intended effect. The writing really calls for a richer voice too. Texts are provided without translation and the booklet-note points out that not all the songs were, after all, given in this form in 1921.

Of recent alternatives in the main work, Douglas Boyd’s straightforward Manchester Camerata version (Avie, 8/05) comes without makeweight but has Kate Royal in the finale, while Kenneth Slowik’s Smithsonian Chamber Players (Dorian, 4/04) offer a radical revivification indebted to Mengelberg’s “authentic” Mahler style.