Now here’s a CD that can’t be judged by its cover. No, it’s not a Janine Jansen solo album, although that’s the obvious, and presumably deliberate, first impression, but in fact a chamber music recording involving the Dutch violinist and five colleagues from her festival in Utrecht. And if anyone deserves to be featured in a hero-shot on the cover, it should in fact be audio engineer Julian Schwenkner who’s captured this interesting coupling of Schoenberg and Schubert in magnificent, warm, truly-contoured sound.

As for the performances, every moment of Transfigured Night is drama-charged and driven home with commitment, making it easy to understand how the Second Viennese School arose not out of some abstract theory, but from late-Romantic hyperemotionalism. Jansen’s sweettoned fiddle balanced against the rich dual-cello sound makes Schoenberg’s haunting picture of Maeterlinck’s lovers in a moonlit forest into a compelling listen.

The Schubert’s pretty good too, but as sometimes happens when friends get together, it perhaps misses some of the profundity, especially in the glorious Trio of the Scherzo, which suggests players anxiously glancing at one another, rather than the played-inblood, rip-your-heart-out shredfest that permanent ensembles like the Guarneris bring to it on disc. State of the art, perhaps, but not necessarily for the ages.