Richard Strauss scored his Don Quixote for a large orchestra stretching from piccolo to tuba. The arrangement of the work here, by former New York Philharmonic principal cellist Laszlo Varga (1924-2014), recasts it for just six instruments: violin, viola, cello, clarinet, horn and piano. In the Olmos Ensemble’s premiere recording, we are also missing Variations Nos 7 and 8, although the booklet doesn’t make it clear whether that omission is Varga’s or the ensemble’s.

It might sound like an unlikely undertaking, but the ear adjusts surprisingly readily to the arrangement’s different sound world. For me, it became less a case of regretting what’s not there than admiring the ingenuity with which Varga solves each challenge that comes his way. Indeed, the fact that the piano is often left to take up much of the slack means that Strauss’s more modernist passages gain a new angularity. Rarely have the penitents sounded so threatening, for example, and the flock of sheep takes on an extra nightmarish quality, with jittery string figurations alternating with flutter-tonguing and queasy horn wobbles. Elsewhere, though, we inevitably miss the soaring luxuriousness of Strauss’s string lines and the broad soundscapes of his orchestration. But with Julian Schwarz wringing every drop of expression from the cello part, Colin Brookes pleasingly garrulous as his viola squire and highly committed playing from the rest of the ensemble – all high-flying soloists and orchestral musicians in their own right – there’s much to enjoy here.

The two couplings might seem incongruous, the German origins of their composers notwithstanding. The Theme and Variations by Ruth Schonthal (1924-2006) reveals a composer of clear vision and considerable skill: an appealing, organically crafted nine-minute work, beautifully performed by Mark Teplitzky. There’s possibly a more concrete link with Rudolf Tillmetz (1847-1915), who, as principal flute in the Munich Court Opera Orchestra, will no doubt have known both Strauss and his father. His Nocturne, though, is somewhat forgettable – imagine grandiloquent horn statements against increasingly filigree flute-writing – but it’s well performed in what we’re told is its first professional recording.