Schoenberg’s admiration for Mahler extended to founding an Association for Private Musical Performances to revive Viennese musical life after WWI. They could rarely afford a full orchestra so relied on chamber music reductions. In the case of The Song of the Earth, Schoenberg completed only most of the first song then delegated Webern to the task, by which time the Association was bankrupt. The real hero is Rainer Riehn, who completed the sketch in the 1980s based on Schoenberg’s orchestration. “Mahler arr Riehn” doesn’t have quite the cachet of “Mahler arr Schoenberg”, so you can imagine the push to overstate the latter’s involvement. Nonetheless, the arrangement is a credit to Riehn and this CD is also a credit to Douglas Boyd and his ensemble and singers.

The Song of the Earth in any form represents Mahler’s art at its most distilled and offers a tantalising glimpse – as do the Ninth and Tenth symphonies – into how his music would have developed had he lived longer. Even the full orchestral version has many chamber-like textures and it’s anyone’s guess how these two singers would have fared in the more heavily scored passages (Christa Ludwig and Fritz Wunderlich in Klemperer’s reading cut through superbly).

Here, Peter Wedd has just the right manic quality in the first song and Der Abschied doesn’t drag interminably. Jane Irwin is lovely in Von der Schoenheit and doesn’t belt out the fast passage. The Schoenberg orchestration (for solo strings, solo winds, harmonium and percussion) is preserved by Riehn, except for the addition of a celeste in the hauntingly beautiful final bars.