Vienna, old and new, meet on this journey from Mozart to Schoenberg and then on to Berg, Weill, Gerhard and Ligeti with David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta. Central to this anthology is the pioneering set of music by Schoenberg recorded in 1973–74 critically acclaimed for its “big line and attention to detail” (Stereo Review) and for the “mellow but well-detailed recording” (Gramophone).

The London Sinfonietta is renowned across the world as one of the most adventurous groups commissioning and performing new music. From its inception, however, the Sinfonietta played the classics alongside new and avant-garde pieces, and this new Eloquence set traces the engagement of the group with the Viennese tradition.

At the centre of the set is the 5-LP survey of Schoenberg’s chamber music – from the early and Wagnerian Verklärte Nacht to the late Phantasy for violin and piano – which the Sinfonietta recorded in 1973-4 to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. The recordings were bedded in by extensive performing experience, in a comprehensive concert series celebrating the music of Schoenberg and his Catalan student, Roberto Gerhard.

The Sinfonietta’s co-founder David Atherton had come to know Gerhard at Cambridge, and so these recordings bear the stamp of authority, as well as thorough preparation. In a new interview for the set with note-writer Peter Quantrill, Atherton explains the genesis of the Sinfonietta as formed around the unique instrumentation of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. He and his colleagues shook up the London concert scene in the 1970s with their energy and commitment to modernist classics and living composers.

However, the Sinfonietta brought the same incisive musicianship to Mozart’s wind serenades and Schubert’s sacred music, as these Argo recordings testify. A further rarity is the album of clarinet concertos by Louis Spohr, with the ensemble’s long-standing clarinettist, Antony Pay, as soloist. Recorded after a complete Stravinsky concert series, their version of Agon has long been recognised as a definitive account. The Gerhard album preserves all three of the composer’s late and exquisite ‘Zodiac’ pieces, Gemini, Libra and Leo, the last two named after the zodiacal signs of Gerhard and his wife.

The set also includes the 3-LP Weill set that Atherton and the Sinfonietta recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1975, and concludes with the Ligeti album recorded that same year by the ensemble for Decca’s 20th-century HEAD series with soloists Aurèle Nicolet (flute) and Heinz Holliger (oboe).

The set makes a significant contribution to the Schoenberg 150th anniversary year, as well as telling a compelling story of one of the UK’s most innovative performing ensembles.

“Monumental, and monumentally important … Throughout one is conscious that these are not interpretations which have been put together specially for the recording, but ones that have had time to grow and settle.” – Gramophone, September 1974 (Schoenberg)

“For such an amount of marvellous music mostly marvellously performed, this set is a delight, and very welcome indeed.” – Musical Times, September 1975 (Schoenberg)

“June Barton sings Herzgewächse, the astronautical Maeterlinck setting, with amazing security … John Shirley-Quirk does a really distinguished job on the solo in the Serenade … The serious Schoenberg admirer will doubtless want this set.” – High Fidelity, July 1976 (Schoenberg)

“[The Sinfonietta’s] players are English musicians trained in the great tradition – a perfect combination for Schoenberg. In short, they play this music with the same care, big line and attention to detail they would give Beethoven or Brahms … Schoenberg would have been pleased.” – Stereo Review, April 1977 (Schoenberg)

“The performances still retain their proficient sting and expressive ferocity. Atherton’s alert London Sinfonietta revels in the tart edge of Weill’s whiplash orchestrations” 10/10 rating Classics Today.com

“Sensitive performances… It would be difficult for anyone not to be moved by the endings of Libra and Leo.” – Gramophone, August 1977 (Gerhard)