One of atonal music's founding fathers along with Arnold Schoenberg, Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959) is all but unknown today as a creative figure. Perhaps the 20 piano pieces collected on this disc explain why. Many of them are constructed from single lines consisting solely of quarter notes. The intervals between notes contain all the music's tension and release. Some pieces are chord based; others mix chords and single lines in simple rhythmic patterns. Note that "atonal" doesn't necessarily mean "dissonant", for many of the slow-moving chords are definitely consonant, even if they don't resolve according to the tenets of tonal hierarchy. There's an experimental rather than public aura to these stark, severe works, akin to Liszt's strange, late piano works. You don't have to be a virtuoso to play Hauer, but it helps if you have a gift for nuance and a knack for phrase shaping. Steffen Schleiermacher, of course, is a virtuoso who can play anything, and his concentrated, direct performances make every note count. MDG's resonant, slightly distant miking fits this oddly compelling repertoire like a glove. Not a major priority, then, but historically interesting nonetheless. Whether or not you find ownership a necessity is another matter entirely, but if you do, you won't readily find better than this.

--Jed Distler