Transfiguration - Music of Beethoven, Mahler, & Schönberg
Smithsonian Chamber Players conducted by Kenneth Slowik
Recorded 1995
Gustav Mahler: Adagietto from the Symphony No. 5
Ludwig van Beethoven: Quartetto serioso in F Minor, Op. 95, arranged for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler
Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 (1917 string orchestra version)
The recording of the Mahler arrangement of the Beethoven Quartetto serioso, Op. 95 is also contained on the anthology "Century Classics VI: 1800-1900," BMG/deutsche harmonia mundi 05472 77605 2.
The recording of Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht is also contained, as the music for Anthony Tudor's ballet Pillar of Fire, on the anthology "American Ballet Theatre, Volume 1," BMG/RCA Red Seal 09026-63190-2.
Only a performance as sensitive as Mr. Slowik’s to all the minutely-shifting narrative connections that Schoenberg’s program note sets forth can make the most of the composer’s musical rhetoric.