Camerata Academica Salzburg, Franz Welser-Most - Schubert: Death & The Maiden / Schreker: Chamber Symphony (1999)

When Arnold Schoenberg was forging a modern vocabulary in the late-romantic climate of early 20th-century Vienna he was not alone, and while his results seemed to many like a complete mutation of tradition, the work of his lesser-known colleagues would suggest it was just evolution pushing a little harder.
One of those contemporaries was Franz Schreker, whose Chamber Symphony of 1917 bears considerable resemblance to Schoenberg's so-named works. In Schreker's case the harmony is not quite so revolutionary, but the delicate, shifting textures are, summoning comparison with Webern and his followers. Once again Franz Welser-Möst shows that he is as good at Digging up interesting, forgotten composers as he is at conducting their music. Schubert needs no introduction, of course, but here we have his famous D Minor Quartet in an orchestration by Gustav Mahler that swamps some details of the original while giving appealing heft to others.