It would be a mistake to suggest that Robin Holloway's works for chamber ensemble form a coherent group. One cannot even unhesitatingly apply the term ‘chamber music’ to all the works under consideration here: Fantasy-Pieces, Evening with Angels and the Concertino No.3 are not significantly different in scope from the orchestral pieces to which each is most closely related—Scenes from Schumann, Domination of Black and the two earlier Concertinos respectively; that is to say, one can just as easily see them as orchestral pieces manquées. What can be stated with certainty is that among Holloway's chamber ensemble pieces are to be found some of his favourite forms and some of his most characteristic ideas, both musical and extra-musical. Garden Music and the Serenade in C, for instance, are divertimenti like the three works which bear that name: essentially, relaxed pieces for civilized enjoyment. Evening with Angels has affinities both with the tone-poem and the song-cycle—the latter such a beloved form of Holloway's that of his 41 opus numbers to date, no less than eighteen are song-cycles of various kinds. The Rivers of Hell is also a kind of tone-poem, as well as being Holloway's most ambitious exercise so far in purely chamber sonorities.