At the same time as Arnold Schoenberg, Josef Matthias Hauer developed a very individual system for twelve-tone composition. The works of the two Austrians could not be more different, as Steffen Schleiermacher has impressively documented in several CD productions.


Nachklangstudien, one of Hauer's better known works makes it onto this new recording, contrasted with the Five Little Pieces from the same year, which, with their reminiscences of Reger and other contrapuntalists, seem almost traditional.

The cycle Music-Film is downright enigmatic. The 21 character pieces have programmatic titles, as if they were meant to illustrate a silent movie, and indeed, the pieces have nothing in common with Hauer's other tonal language.

Steffen Schleiermacher, however, approaches this work with the same seriousness as he does the other pieces, succeeding in a fascinating rehabilitation for someone who has been unjustly almost completely forgotten.