Three of the four works on this disc were first issued as couplings to Riccardo Chailly's recordings of the Brahms symphonies—an imaginative idea, but probably not so attractive commercially at a time when record enthusiasts prefer to do their own programme planning. In any case, these early reissues, with the Webern Passacaglia added, offer the chance for an assessment of Chailly's way with two of the Second Viennese School composers.
In his first reviews, AS was right to prefer Chailly's account of Schoenberg's Op. 9 to that of Op. 16. The Chamber Symphony is fiercely projected but well co-ordinated, with only the very final pages, whooping horns to the fore, going over the top. I don't feel that the performance manages as convincing a balance between the work's lyric and dramatic dimensions as that by the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, but the Decca recording scores on contrapuntal clarity, and the engineers are far more successful in this respect than they are with Op. 16. As AS noted, Chailly never comes to terms with the mysterious, magical world of the Five Orchestral Pieces and the recorded balance is unsatisfactory. Simon Rattle and the CBSO are still the first choice here.
It makes sense to place the two early Webern pieces together, and although the effect is to underline the awkwardness of Im Sommerwind (1904), Chailly makes a good case for both works. The apprentice tone-poem is affectionately shaped, its naivetes cushioned by a pervading warmth of expression. By contrast the Passacaglia (1908) emerges as intensely, even expressionistically dramatic, and the recording enables us to hear the polyphony without bringing individual lines into unnatural relief. There are many other good recordings of the Passacaglia, but only Chailly puts it in the context of its appealingly gauche precursor.'