Simon Rattle has recorded both Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony and his orchestration of Brahms's Piano Quartet in G Minor before, during his Birmingham years, performances that are available on a terrific bargain five-disc set devoted to the second Viennese school. Those earlier performances are arguably more effective than these new, much plusher ones, which were taken from concerts in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2009. The later Rattle moulds the great paragraphs of the Brahms Piano Quartet in a way that tends to blur its outlines and undermine the stark grandeur that emerges so powerfully in the earlier performance. And however well played it is, the full-orchestra version of the Chamber Symphony can never generate the same sinewy intensity as the original, with its single strings and wind, that Rattle opted for previously. The late Accompaniment to a Film Scene, effectively a miniature tone poem, is new to his Schoenberg discography, though, and superbly played by the Berlin Phil, with Rattle encapsulating perfectly its concentrated drama.
Schoenberg: Accompaniment to a Film Scene; Chamber Symphony; etc – review
(EMI)
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