Excellent news: the revival of interest in the music of Egon Wellesz (who died 30 years ago this year) continues apace. Even more encouraging, as with CPO’s continuing symphonic cycle, is the fine quality of the performances – here expertly directed by Roger Epple – and Capriccio’s sound, crystal-clear and rich yet without being overheated.

The vocal items come from two distinct periods, the mid-1930s and 1965-66. In setting the five Sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1934) Wellesz used Rilke’s translations, which he felt improved on ‘the beauty of the originals’. The landscape is atonal, the textures Schoenbergian, but the cycle builds with impeccable harmonic logic to the intense final.

The Hofmannstahl settings from the 1930s, Leben, Traum und Tod (‘Life, Dream and Death’) – actually a pair of Lieder – and Lied der Welt (‘Song of the World’), are not as expansive but feel like operatic scenas. By contrast, Ode an die Musik (1965) and Vision (1966) are more abstract and freer in form, not unlike Dallapiccola’s late vocal works, albeit less aphoristic.

The leaner, more dissonant nature of their idiom is more manifest in the purely orchestral Symphonic Epilogue (1969), a compelling example of Wellesz’s last style. It makes a terrific contrast to the opening item, the neo-impressionistic soundscape Vorfrühling (‘The Dawn of Spring’) of 1912, with its gorgeous late-Romantic harmonies. Strongly recommended.