Eisler wrote relatively few works for chamber ensemble, and this well-filled record gives us some of the best and most important pieces. In style as in quality, they vary considerably. The two nonets, for example, both began life as film scores, and they reveal traces of their popular programme-music origins. The other works come much closer to Eisler's teacher, Schoenberg, and not surprisingly make for more challenging listening. One of them, the quintet Fourteen ways of describing the rain, is unquestionably the highlight of the issue and an important new addition to the catalogue.
If there has been any error of judgement here, it is the ordering of pieces. Lacking any real substance or structure, the Nonet No. 1 makes for the weakest possible opening, and it is only marginally bettered by the much bigger Nonet No. 2, a suite full of spiky little marches and themes as evanescent as they are characterful. Only with Fourteen ways... does the meat seem to arrive at the table. This tight, close-textured piece, scored for the same instrumental combination as Pierrot Lunaire, is a chain of variations, although the germinal theme proves to be so intangible and amorphous that the movement appear rather to be variations upon one another. Sunnier but less warming is the Violin Sonata, one of those pieces that bears the hallmarks of a professional composer keeping his technique in trim, fugato, cadenza and all. But matters look up again at the concluding Duo for violin and cello, a student piece written immediately in the wake of (and deeply indebted to) Schoenberg's Opp. 24 and 25, complete with the stylized rhythms of baroque dance. a mixed bag, then; but the playing is strong throughout, the recording is good, and the better pieces are certainly worth exploring by those who have previously thought of Eisler as only a composer of politically motivated songs.'