Fred Sherry, the soloist in the Cello Concerto on this new release, is well known for his pioneering approach to recording modern music, having worked closely with composers such as Babbit, Berio and Takemitsu. His long standing collaboration with Robert Craft has produced recordings of Schoenberg’s Cello Concerto and String Quartet Concerto and other major works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern. Craft himself has a long history of conducting Schoenberg.

In 1933, Schoenberg transcribed for cello a harpsichord concerto by the baroque composer Matthias Monn (1717-50). He dedicated his arrangement to Pablo Casals, whom he had met in Vienna, but Casals considered it too demanding. It was later premièred instead by Emmanuel Feuermann in London.

Of the Five Orchestral Pieces, Schoenberg wrote: “Art belongs to the unconscious. One must express oneself directly.” Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor of 1863 attracted Schoenberg, who had played it as violist and cellist, and who felt that the piano dominated the work at the expense of the strings. His transcription is a feast for orchestra.