“The better the pianist, the louder he plays,” Schoenberg complained about Brahms’s G-minor Piano Quartet, grumbling that he could never hear the strings. Still, he liked the piece enough to make an orchestral arrangement (“I wanted for once to hear everything”). It’s true that the dark energy of the original always feels as if it’s surging out of its skin, but that’s the thrill. And where Brahms was fastidious about every colour and contour, there’s something flattening about Schoenberg’s gloopy dollops of strings and winds, all doubled up for extra heft. Jacek Kaspszyk and the Warsaw Philharmonic embrace the massive sweep of the melodies: their second movement is stately, the flutes and triangles of the military march pert and kitsch, the rondo chunky. It’s a fun ride. Schoenberg’s grandiose arrangement of Bach’s “St Anne” Prelude and Fugue gets a similarly full-throttle treatment – this orchestra knows how to make a broad sound – but the most striking moment comes from a pair of solo clarinets singing their fugue lines alone.
