Robert Craft conducts the Music of Arnold Schoenberg Vol 3. (Koch International)
Robert Craft, the right-hand man of Stravinsky's later years, made the first thorough recorded surveys of the music of Webern and Schoenberg. Now he's back with Schoenberg again in performances of typical vitality and penetrating insight. In the early Chamber Symphony (with New York's 20th Century Classics Ensemble), he marries rhythmic incisiveness and propulsion with a rich espressivo style in the string playing. With Catherine Wyn-Rogers, a commanding mezzo soloist in the orchestral Songs, Op. 22 he searches out the extraordinary colours of Schoenberg on the final cusp of his pre-12-tone writing. The Philharmonia Orchestra is pliably responsive, too, in the first of the composer's 12-tone orchestral works, the Variations Op. 31. Craft's accompanying notes are superb.
- Michael Dervan