Historical performance pioneer Trevor Pinnock conducts the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble in revealing chamber arrangements from Mahler to Zemlinksy.

This CD is the third in the series which sees Trevor and the Academy perform and record works which are retrospectively reigniting Schoenberg’s vision of performing chamber reductions of symphonic repertoire.

The works in this recording transport us to a period of vast musical change: in Mahler we hear nostalgia welded with modernism; with Wagner, we hear the sunset of Romanticism; with Zemlinsky we hear the seeds of fin-de-siècle Vienna; and in all, the extremities of emotion distilled into non-symphonic forces.

Arnold Schoenberg’s own arrangement of Mahler’s intensely personal song cycle is followed by Erwin Stein’s arrangement of Busoni’s landmark composition Berceuse élégiaque.

Specially commissioned for this chamber series is Christopher Austin’s arrangement of Zemlinsky’s evocative Sechs Gesänge, which enjoys its premiere recording here. Closing the disc is Wagner’s infamous Siegfried Idyll.

The arrangements for chamber forces serve to illuminate the original scores, and the clarity achieved in these performances expose revealing new insights.

Trevor Pinnock is recognised worldwide as a harpsichordist and conductor who pioneered performance on historical instruments with his own orchestra, The English Concert.