CD: Webern: Chamber Music for Strings: Schoenberg Quartet

The works that came to light after Webern's death in 1945, most of them composed before his official Op 1, bulked out his output in almost every genre.

The Schoenberg Quartet completes its survey of the Second Viennese School with a disc that adds four unnumbered works to the standard canon of Webern's string music, including the single slow movement, the rather more substantial single- movement String Quartet and the Rondo, all of which Webern completed in 1905-6.

The works graphically chart the evolution of his musical language under Schoenberg's tutelage. They are given refined, sensitive performances, as are all the better-known later works - the pieces for violin and piano Op 7 and cello and piano Op 11, as well as the quartet pieces (Opp 5, 9 and 28) and the String Trio Op 20. They don't quite match the great LaSalle Quartet in this repertory, but the Chandos sound is much fuller and more rounded than that 1970s recording.