Many great philosophers have written about music, but few have actually composed: we have no symphonies by Kant, no operas by Schopenhauer. On the other hand, various compositions by Nietzsche sunive, and this disc makes it possible to explore the efforts of one of the twentieth century's most penetrating commentators on music's place in the wider world of thought and feeling, T. W. Adorno.
Adorno studied with Berg in the 1920s, and the works from that period included here trace a progression from an almost nostalgic commitment to quite traditional ways (the Daubler settings) to the open embrace of expressionist fragmentation (the orchestral pieces). There are signs in these orchestral pieces, as well as in those for string quartet, the Adorno had difficulty in reconciling (or in decidinz whether he needed to reconcile) his regard for the 'atonal' freedoms won by Schoenberg and others between 1907 and 1912 with the more disciplined, even neo-classical procedures of the 1920s. The most striking musical ideas are to be found in the two brief songs from the projected Singspiel using Mark Twain's characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which hint at a sardonic manner similar to Weill or Eisler. After this the Schumann orchestrations, though not without some imaginative touches of colour, are very small beer.
The instrumental works are dryly recorded the choral pieces excessively recessed. But I recommend the disc, especially to composers who might be tempted to try their hands at philosophy.'