Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major; Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Arrangements for Chamber Orchestra)

Album review

The idea of a chamber arrangement of a Mahler symphony sounds like the punch line of a music-school joke, but give this unusual little release a chance. The two arrangements here, of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major and Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, share a common source milieu: both were made for the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen, the Society for Private Musical Performances, that nurtured the careers of Schoenberg and Webern, and the development of the twelve tone system generally. Two different arrangers are represented: Erwin Stein for the Mahler (with unspecified "reconstruction" by Alexander Platt), and Benno Sachs for the Debussy. The Mahler is far superior and really has a good deal of charm. Stein retains much of the percussion writing in the symphony, much of which consists of sequences of little chamber scenes anyway; if you were going to do this with one Mahler symphony, No. 4 is the right one, and the Martingale Ensemble, a group from the U.S. Pacific Northwest, rises to the occasion even where the music's difficulty is increased in comparison with the orchestral version. American soprano Deanna Breiwick delivers a lovely performance of the vocal fourth movement, effectively scaling it back to art song dimensions. Sample some of her singing (on track 4, "Sehr behaglich), which you may well find worth the purchase price by itself. So varied is Stein's handiwork that the music never plods, even in the nearly 20-minute slow movement. The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, by contrast, feels as though it has experienced real losses, perhaps unsurprising in view of the low level of understanding of Debussy in Vienna. But this remains an intriguing pick, especially for anyone interested in the interwar Viennese scene.

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