This is a nice idea: the Texas-based Olmos Ensemble will release a series of albums, each concentrating on a particular country, offering rare works or known works in unusual arrangements. The current release offers examples of both. The release coincides with the opening of Olmos Ensemble’s 32nd season. The programming offers an example of another of Olmos’ traits, in its focus on female composers, here Ruth Schonthal. 

The disc begins with a piece for solo flute, the Theme and Variations by Schonthal. It has been a while since I encountered any of this composer’s music; the last time was back in 2010 on a Cambria disc featuring pianist Margaret Mills that featured three of her pieces (Canticles, based on Hieronymus Bosch, Gestures, and Self-Portrait; the rest of the disc was taken up by music by Lowell Liebermann). Mark Teplitsky it is, that performs the present beautiful set of variations on a simple, happy tune, a late work by Schonthal that uses variations as narrative vehicle: flautist as commedia dell’arte figure, perhaps. Her use of near-quotation is effective, too (Stravinsky’s flute from Petrushka surely makes an appearance). Teplitsky is superb, not least in the use of tremolo, which is always perfectly even. He flies freely, as do Schonthal’s notes. 

Rudolf Tillmetz (1847–1915) makes his Fanfare debut here with his Nocturne for flute, horn, and piano, op. 31. He studied flute with Theobald Boehm (inventor of the modern flute). It was published in 1898, the same year as Strauss’s Don Quixote; it receives its first professional recording here. This is an unusual combination, but one must remember that the French horn’s melodic abilities are right up there with the flute’s (think of Richard Strauss’s many examples, perhaps most immediately the slow movements of his two horn concertos). Tillmetz’s piece is more domestic music, though, music for a German salon. The interplay between the two breath-based instruments is lovely to hear, and Jeff Garza, principal horn of the Oregon Symphony, enjoys remarkable agility and a beautifully secure upper register. Tillmetz’s piece is skilfully written, and Teplitzky and Garza are a match made in Heaven. A cadenza for flute and horn is brilliantly written and just as brilliantly played by both. Joining them is pianist Elizabeth Dorman, who brings huge character to Tillmetz’s piano writing. The piece ends in accord for all three, as one might expect, which means the staccato opening of Strauss’s Don Quixote can make full effect. 

The Don Quixote is a delight. There is such a light touch here; those used to Staatskapelle Dresden/Kempe or the various Karajan recordings will hear another side to this piece. True, Kempe had Max Rostal and Paul Tortelier as soloists, and Karajan the pick of the crop always, but there is something very appealing about the boundless enthusiasm of this chamber performance. This arrangement, by Laszlo Varga, is for six instruments (clarinet, French horn, violin, viola, cello, and piano), and Varga’s usage of his array of sound is painterly. Thought has clearly gone into the timbral makeup of every chord. The Olmos Ensemble is the first group to have permission to record this arrangement. 

Varga’s story is itself interesting: a cellist born in Hungary, he escaped from a Nazi labor camp to become principal cellist with the New York Philharmonic (working under Mitropoulos and Bernstein). No wonder the cello’s writing is so fierce and yet so clearly written “for” that instrument. Varga works particularly well with atmospherics and gesture, sometimes using Strauss’s harmonic schema as basis as opposed to gospel: try “Der siegrieche Kampf gegen das Heer des großen Kaisers Alifanfaron” as a case in point. The return to echt-Straussian writing is not unlike the arrival of the great unison in the “Battle Scene” of Ein Heldenleben. Here it is cellist Julian Schwarz and violist Colin Brookes who are the Don and Sancho Panza respectively, and both play with huge character. 

Varga deploys the piano well, giving it a character of its own (as opposed to an all-purpose note and texture filler). The Olmos Ensemble also extracts maximum value from differing modes of articulation, not only for variety but also for a sort of faux-Straussian heaviness. The reduction, of course, leaves nobody anywhere to hide, and so all credit to the Olmos Ensemble for their breathtaking accuracy. They can create a sort of collective alternative space, too, a dark backcloth to the virtuosity of the solo cello (“Der Waffenwache”). And when the pianist in “Begegnung mit Dulzinea” plays like a pub piano, the effect is, rather remarkably, to lean toward the Tavern Scene in Berg’s Wozzeck. 

The achievement here is that Varga creates what is effectively a parallel reality for Don Quixote: some passages seem to be options for what could have been, while some are what never could be but now are, all the while offering an x-ray of the original score in the search of its quintessence. I am not sure one can ask more from an “arrangement” (the very term does this enterprise a disservice). 

A fascinating release: imaginative couplings to the main event, each illuminating the other, all brilliantly, fastidiously performed and well recorded.