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The present recording brings together two great early works of Gustav Mahler in chamber orchestra arrangements made for use by Arnold Schönberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, played by an ensemble whose interpretations owe much to those of Willem Mengelberg, the celebrated conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mahler’s most fervent advocate for more than a quarter century. A warning to the faint-hearted may be in order: Mengelberg’s style clashes, at times violently, with the “objectivist” stance championed by Toscanini, and adopted generally in his wake. According to Mengelberg, and according to the longstanding tradition of which he was among the last exponents, “the performer must help the creator.” In our age, in which the science of musicology has elevated the Urtext edition to a position of veneration, it is sobering to realize that embracing Mengelberg’s statement that “faithfulness to the notes is a recent invention” must be taken, at least for the repertoire with which he was closely associated, as perhaps the most “authentic” stance possible to adopt, and one which illustrates Mahler’s own dictum: “what is most important in music is not to be found in the printed notes.”

                                                                          —from Kenneth Slowik’s liner notes