Mahler’s string-orchestra version of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet has received quite a lot of attention on records, especially given that the arrangement is incomplete, consisting mainly of notations in his score. Considering, also, that these edits have more to do with the addition of articulation and dynamic markings than real arranging, the conductorless 12 Ensemble were wise to go their own way. Still, I’m left with the nagging question of what’s gained by performing this work with an expanded string ensemble. There’s added weight, of course, and the addition of a double bass gives a profound physicality to key junctures – as when the fierce opening motif makes a decisive return at 1'14" in the first movement. What’s lost, I find, is the lean edge of the original. The desperate passage of semiquavers at 2'32", for example, simply has more bite when played one to a part.

Curiously, too, the 12 Ensemble’s adaptation strikes me as less colourful than the original, seeming to be conceived entirely in finely shaded greyscale. This is not necessarily a failing, as it fits the music’s overwhelmingly bleak character, and the performance is consistently and expressively compelling – note, for instance, how lovingly the violins shape their ornamented line in the slow movement’s first variation. But I sense that this arrangement might be more effective in concert than it is on disc, although the recorded sound is excellent.

Oliver Leith’s Honey Siren (siren as in ‘the wailing kind, not the bird women singing on rocks’, the composer says) plays to the 12 Ensemble’s strengths in the music’s indissoluble fusing of melody and texture. In the second movement, marked ‘Full, like drips & then globs’, Leith creates a sound that seems to be hanging in thick, undulating liquid globules from a progression of tonal harmonies. And the finale, ‘Like dancing in slow honey’, is expertly constructed, building gradually to its unexpectedly moving conclusion. There’s a peculiar half-lit quality to Leith’s writing that’s mesmeric, and I’m eager to hear more from him.

The programme opens with an atmospheric performance of Tavener’s The Lamb, in the composer’s arrangement for strings, and closes with an aptly luminous arrangement of ‘Fljótavík’ by the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, suggesting, perhaps, there’s redemption for Schubert’s long-suffering maiden after all.