The compositions of native Viennese Thomas Wally (b. 1981), which the fabled Mondrian Ensemble have so marvelously put down on this, the composer’s first portrait recording, might just be considered the dawn of the latest in new music. We can marvel at the unique language and character in Wally’s works from the last ten years – among them two piano quartets, a string trio, and a 15-minute long piece for solo violin – and at his keen desire for experimentation and liberty which he combines with the utmost of conceptual seriousness. We can hear playful curiosity and profound knowledge at work in these compositions, seamlessly conjoined. A wealth of detail and vision; poetry coupled with absolute clarity. In that sense, and many others, Thomas Wally’s music is “visceral; even displaying a downright haptic quality”, as his renown Swiss colleague Dieter Ammann lauds Wally’s music in the liner notes.

Works of the Austrian composer Thomas Wally have been performed all over the world by renowned ensembles and orchestras like the Mondrian Ensemble, PHACE, Klangforum Wien, OENM, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. His oeuvre has received numerous national and international prizes. Besides his composer’s life, Thomas Wally teaches as a Senior Lecturer for music theory, ear training, and analysis at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

The all-female Mondrian Ensemble has been hailed as a group of “daring bridge- builders” when they were bestowed the 2018 Swiss Music Prize for Best Ensemble, and praised for being “musicians who draw lines across epochs, styles and genres” and to whom commitment to contemporary music is as important as is their engagement with the classical-romantic repertoire. The musicians curate a concert series of their own and regularly appear at international festivals and on concert stages throughout the world.

– Dieter Ammann