Recorded live in concert,
Paavo Järvi created and
conducted this thrilling
programme of orchestral
arrangements of chamber music works. The result is a world-class encounter between some of the most important names
in music history.
There are great pieces of music which, throughout history, have inspired composers to make new arrangements, in particular orchestral arrangements of chamber works. This CD, which was recorded live in concert, features Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor and We-bern’s arrangement of Bach’s Fuga (Ricercata) as well as a setting of Webern’s own Langsamer Satz for string quartet, here transcribed for string orchestra by Gerard Schwarz.
Schoenberg was a great admirer of Brahms and his transcription is a masterpiece of or-chestral writing in which he created an in-genious fusion of authentic Brahms with no-ticeable touches of his own musical lan-guage. Webern more or less created a com-pletely new composition with his orchestra-tion of the Fuga (Ricercata) from Bach’s late The Musical Offering – deconstructing the ‘old’ and making a totally new sound; a sound for twentieth-century ears. Meanwhile Langsamer Satz is a setting of one of We-bern’s very early works, transcribed for strings and returning us to a Late Romantic soundscape.