Arnold Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918 to perform contemporary music from ‘Mahler to the present’. Mahler had been an early supporter of Schoenberg’s music, and Schoenberg repaid the favour by arranging Mahler’s orchestral works for chamber ensemble and including them at the society’s concerts. The colourful Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are given a feel of great intimacy in this form, while the lighter scoring of Das Lied von der Erde has the advantage of clarifying instrumental textures, its magical effects capturing ‘the finite nature of earthly things’.