Daniel Raiskin - Brahms arr. Schoenberg: Piano Quartet; Brahms arr. Berio: Clarinet Sonata (2008)

"The main attraction on this disc is the Berio orchestral arrangement of the Clarinet Sonata op.120/1. Like Schoenberg, it’s a harmonically and melodically “straight” transcription, not a modern re-imagining of the work. Berio, no stranger to orchestrations and adaptations - Puccini’s Turandot, works by Schubert, Mahler, and Verdi - tackled this last major work of Brahms’ for reasons we don’t know. Iosif Raiskin speculates that the tinges of Mahler in late Brahms may have been a reason for the Mahler-loving Berio. Be that as it may, the result is a wonderfully graceful Brahms Clarinet Concerto. Quite different than the grandiloquent Schoenberg transcriptions — partly due to the very different source material, partly due to the airier orchestration.

Karl Heinz Steffens’ performance is, if anything, even better than the already admirable orchestral contribution in the Berio-Brahms. If you like the idea of transcriptions, if you like Brahms, if you don’t already have a recording of the “Fifth Symphony”, and if you like the clarinet (or if any two of these four points are true), this is probably worth seeking out." -- Jens F. Laurson