Schoenberg always made a clear distinction between his aspirations as a composer and his responsibilities as a teacher. Refusing to teach the elements of his own innovative techniques, he remained fervently committed to grounding students in the traditional skills of tonal harmony and counterpoint, from time to time producing compositions which had little or nothing to do with atonality or serialism but were designed to demonstrate the virtues of the ‘old’ style.

This disc contains two such works. The Suite in G for string orchestra (1934) is actually subtitled ‘in the old style’ but it sounds closer to the kind of early-20th-century idiom associated with a composer such as Max Reger, or even Busoni, than to imitation Bach or Mozart. The final Gigue is the most immediately appealing movement but Robert Craft directs a sprightly performance that gives the whole piece much-needed light and air.

The two sets of German folksong arrangements (from 1928 and 1948) weave sophisticated polyphonic fabrics around quite simple tunes, proving Schoenberg’s point that such compositional exercises could be as accomplished in their own terms as any genuinely new composition: for example, his own Second Quartet. While this is a much-recorded piece – my preferred version is by the Aron Quartet on Preiser – this is an expertly played, well characterised account. Jennifer Welch-Babidge sings strongly and truly in the final pair of movements, although I’d have preferred a recorded balance which placed her more discreetly within the ensemble, rather than (apparently) in front of it.