Zemlinsky wrote neither a Chamber Symphony nor a song-cycle entitled Sieben Lieder von Nacht und Traum, and the works recorded here are arrangements of his music by the Austrian composer Richard Dünser (b1959). The Chamber Symphony is a version of the Second String Quartet using the same orchestration as Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. Sieben Lieder von Nacht und Traum, meanwhile, reworks seven of Zemlinsky’s early songs with piano accompaniment into a meditation on night, sex and death for a ‘middle voice’ capable of encompassing Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder and scored for comparable forces.

The Chamber Symphony proves problematic. The booklet-notes argue that the dimensions of the Second String Quartet ‘urge beyond the limits of the instrumental medium’, an ambiguous statement, since its arching single-movement structure and tortured chromaticism, together with the immense challenges it presents its players, constitute a deliberate engagement with extremes of form, harmony and technique. Any attempt at instrumental expansion consequently runs the risk of dissipating the tensions on which it depends, which proves to be the case here, despite Dünser’s skilful adaptation. Zemlinsky himself wrote nothing for chamber orchestra, though Dünser offers a fair approximation of how things might have sounded if he had. But the emotional tone changes in the process. Brass and woodwind alternately console and energise, where the original is bleak, sparse and enervated. John Storgårds’s performance with his Lapland Chamber Orchestra is finely shaped and beautifully played, but still leaves you with mixed feelings.

Sieben Lieder however, really impresses. The original songs date from 1896 to 1901 and Dünser’s orchestrations reflect their debts to Mahler and Schoenberg. ‘Der Traum’ finds Zemlinsky imitating Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and Dünser’s instrumetation happily follows suit. ‘Und hat der Tag all seine Qual’, to a text by Jens Peter Jacobsen, glows like one of Tove’s songs from Gurrelieder, which also takes Jacobsen as its source. Dünser sometimes plays down the influence of Brahms on Zemlinsky’s original piano-writing, but even so, it proves a remarkably effective cycle which deserves repeated hearings. It’s beautifully sung here by dark-voiced mezzo Jenny Carlstedt, while Storgårds mines the lapidary accompaniments for all they are worth.