Chamber Music

In it's mix of tonality, Expressionism and Schoenbergian serialism, the late chamber music of Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) - born in Vienna but an Oxford don for almost four decades - marries the mid-century radicalism of his native city with the lyricism of his adoptive homeland. In the first part of his career Wellesz was best known as a composer of operas, and these chamber works were audibly written by someone with a keen sense of drama: in their primal passion, flawless pacing, arching melodic lines and occasional bursts of humour, one can almost imagine them on stage.