The "
Sehnsucht
" (or longing) referred to in the title here is not just the emotion so common in works of turn-of-the-20th century Vienna but also a feeling experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by soprano
Barbara Hannigan
and the other performers who wondered when they might return to their work. The performances here were given during a livestream, and they fall into the category of experiments that click and that the musicians decided were worth keeping. All three of the works are heard in arrangements different from their original forms. This might seem like second-guessing the composers, especially in the case of the
Berg
, where the intensity of the
Sieben fruehe Lieder
is a bit diluted by
Reinbert de Leeuw
's chamber arrangement, but the recital effectively communicates the heady atmosphere of
Schoenberg
's Society for Private Musical Performances, where just this kind of experimentation might have taken place. Indeed, the chamber orchestra arrangement by
Erwin Stein
of
Mahler
's
Symphony No. 4 in G major
dates to the days of
and
(although it was lost and had to be reconstructed later). The performance of this work is the highlight of the album, with the
Camerata RCO
(a small group of players from the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
) and conductor
Rolf Verbeek
achieving an excellent lively feel, and the arrangement nicely matching
Hannigan
's rather wiry voice. This album is worth the time of anyone interested in the Viennese music of the early part of the last century. ~ James Manheim