Schoenberg: Variations OP31;Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 (Pathetique) Decca 478 2719****

Daniel Barenboim is new to the Decca label, and the company has issued a clutch of CDs to mark his arrival. They were all taped at concerts, and two are devoted to Chopin, an earnest account of the composer’s two concertos from the Ruhr Piano Festival (July 2010) and a similarly sober all-Chopin recital from Warsaw (February 2010). The Schoenberg/ Tchaikovsky coupling with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which Barenboim co-founded in 1999 to bring together young Arab and Israeli musicians, was taped at the Salzburg Festival in 2007. As in the two Chopin discs, the approach is on the weighty side, impressively so

in the high-impact playing of the outer movements of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. And the Schoenberg Variations make an astonishing showpiece for an orchestra of young players. See url.ie/4w4k