I suppose it’s the seemingly incongruous juxtaposition of names that gives these arrangements their particular interest. On the one hand we have the master of sweet melody, Johann Strauss, and on the other the pioneers of atonal music, Berg, Schoenberg and Webern. All were Viennese through and through, however, and it was to rescue the finances of Schoenberg’s Society for Musical Private Performances in 1921 that he had his pupils join him in arranging four Strauss waltzes for the salon orchestra combination of string quartet, flute, clarinet, piano and harmonium. Later Schoenberg added a further arrangement of the Kaiserwalzer. To the resultant five pieces are here added a further waltz and two polkas in modern arrangements in similar style by Manfred Trojahn and Hans-Peter Dott.

Thoroughly professional though these somewhat closely recorded performances are, they are generally studied and stolid ones, with the music taken at a steady and genteel tempo with often exaggerated ritardandos and a minimum of risks. Comparison with a 1992 EMI collection by the Alban Berg Quartet is not a flattering one, with the latter’s more natural exuberance, graceful lilt and less rigid adherence to repeats producing an altogether more uplifting result. The latter, though, includes only three of the five arrangements, with Schoenberg’s version of the Lagunen-Walzer having resurfaced only in 2005.