BRAHMS: String Quartet Op. 51; SCHOENBERG: Verklärte Nacht, versions for string orchestra – Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson – Channel Classics

BRAHMS: String Quartet Op. 51 No. 1 in C Minor, version for string orchestra; SCHOENBERG: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, version for string orchestra – Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson – Channel Classics multichannel SACD CCS SA 30411, 63:23 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ***:
Brahms reportedly bragged (I guess he was bragging) that he had destroyed twenty string quartets before he let his first published one see the light of day. The slaughter may have been worth the effort: his First String Quartet of 1873, near-tragic in its intensity, is music for the connoisseur, with all the acerbic tang of a very dry white wine. In the version for string orchestra (with an added bass part thanks to arranger Martijn van Prooijen), the Amsterdam Sinfonietta instead gives us a champagne bath. The restless harmonies and rhythms, the spiky tremolos, turn soft-edged in the expanded arrangement, and Channel Classics warm bath of a surround-sound recording just emphasizes the effect. It’s all very lovely and inviting; it just doesn’t sound like the Brahms of the First Quartet to me.
The connection between Brahms and Arnold Schoenberg may not be an immediately obvious one, yet it was this very quartet that caused Schoenberg to cite Brahms as a musical progressive whose innovations in thematic development and phrase structure made Verklärte Nacht possible. As it turns out, I have no cavils about this performance of Verklärte Nacht. A lush though often anguished bit of late-Romantic musical effusiveness, the piece can certainly take a throbbing, heart-on-sleeve approach. Based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, it tells in musical terms the story of a nighttime walk during which a woman confesses to her lover that she carries the child of another man. The lover nonetheless assures the woman of his love for her and acceptance of the child she is carrying. The work starts with a weighty gravity lightened by trills in the first violins that portray the moonlight streaming through the treetops. By the end of the piece the woman’s despair has been replaced by refulgent expansive love music that would make Isolde blush. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but it is all quite purple in hue, hothouse steamy.
Here, the interpretive approach and Channel Classics’ highly atmospheric recording seem perfect to me. The narrative unfolds in a natural progression from darkness to blazing light, and Schoenberg’s tone painting is clearly limned throughout. The playing is also very beautiful. Perhaps this will be enough of an incentive for some listeners. But since I can’t recommend the Amsterdam Sinfonietta’s take on Brahms, I’d pass on this disc in favor of one of the many rival versions of Schoenberg’s classic.
— Lee Passarella