The eminent German composer Helmut Lachenmann enjoys an exalted reputation among a small circle of English contemporary music enthusiasts. To the wider English music public, though, he is little known. There are hardly any comprehensive accounts of Lachenmann in English. His consciously elusive compositional style could even be introduced to the English audience as ‘old-guard avantgarde’ without being challenged at all.

Franz & Morton Singing Together in Harmony (With the Lord Himself Enjoying His Bells) is the title of a recent chamber-music work for violin, cello and piano by Wolfgang von Schweinitz. The musically erudite will have no difficulty in identifying the persons referred to by those Christian names. They are, of course, the two composers, Schubert and Feldman – who, with Schweinitz, form a trio which combines more as a community than merely professionally.

‘Communism is dead’, crowed a recent Prime Minister, little realizing that the shaky condition of capitalism would precipitate her downfall in short order. ‘Socialist art is a phenomenon of the past’, pronounced many post-modernist critics, who equated creative expressions of radical politics with a modernist aesthetic they had already consigned to their re-interpretation of history. Yet as the developed economies totter from one crisis to the next, interspersed with stock market upheavals or corruption scandals, and the ‘new world order’ fails to materialize, a new left-wing idealism is beginning to assert itself in the work of several German composers, and the growing number of discs of their music testifies to the existence of a substantial international audience for their output. It is a movement of considerable diversity, but also genuine sophistication, for it takes account of the limitation of modernism, and is not averse to encompassing expressions of radicalism from the ‘romantic’ era, where appropriate. Thus, it does not shun post-modernism, but incorporates those features which have not been sucked into the new world chaos, or into the prevalent nostalgia, usually associated with the banner of ‘pluralism’. Above all, the new radicalism reaffirms certain fundamental truths, respected by socialism, which have been overlooked both by postmodernists and proponents of the ‘new world order’. It also asserts the importance of artistic integrity at a time when consumerism is undermining creative values.

The current reappraisal of tradition, along with an interest in a music that deals with concrete emotions and which has a direct appeal to audiences, sounds a certain resonance with the aesthetic doctrines that prevailed in the former communist bloc. A sense of history is vital to socialist politics, but the availability of a symphonic tradition to Soviet composers after a break with that heritage suggests a state of posthistoire; a condition normally associated with postmodernism. The postmodernist reappraisal of the past is anticipated by, for example, Shostakovich's complex and sometimes ironic relationship to the symphonic tradition. Conservative traditionalism in the East maintained to be a critique of high modernist principles; in the West, ironically, a turn to tradition is now put forward as an alternative to the same rationalist modernism. At the moment when the achievements of the historical avant-garde and of high modernism have become fully available to the former Eastern Europe, the former Western Europe is engaged with the reappraisal of tradition. Even where a modernist music did develop in Eastern Europe – as, for example, it did in Poland – it was followed by a move back to more traditional techniques. The consequence of this inclination is that composers such as Górecki and Pärt, who employ traditionally-based expressive languages, have shot onto centre stage. The point is that composers from the former communist bloc have already encountered many of the issues that now preoccupy some contemporary composers in the capitalist West.

The last sounds of her Third Symphony have died down; conductor Valery Gergiev turns about, clapping. A wave of surprise and emotion passes through Amsterdam Concertgebouw as Galina Ustvolskaya, shy but determined, climbs the stage. The audience, aware of the historic significance of this moment, continues applauding for some minutes, and she returns to the stage a second time. But this time she turns about half-way up the stairs, and leaves the hall.

Translator's note. The violinist Rudolf Kolisch was brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg. He first played under Schoenberg's direction in the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen. Through the Kolisch Quartet, founded in 1922 on Schoenberg's instigation, and later in America, through the Pro Arte Quartet, he promoted the music of the Second Viennese School. Kolisch's essay was originally published in German as ‘Schönberg als nachschaffender Künstler’ in the issue of Musikblätter des Anbruch commemorating Schoenberg's fiftieth birthday (6 [August–September 1924], 306–7); this is the first English translation. Kolisch's text presents ideas about the rendering of ideas: it is essentially philosophical, and as such, many would argue, untranslatable. There arc no English equivalents for many of its terms. With this proviso, the translation is offered as a guide to the original. In those instances where recurrences of words in the original are not preserved in the translation and where it was felt that important nuances of the original were lost, the German has been added in parentheses. In this regard the words used by Kolisch to denote ‘performance’ are particularly varied: ‘nachschaffen’ (‘to reproduce’); ‘vortragen’ (lit. ‘to carry forward’, hence ‘to hold forth’, ‘to execute’; Kolisch used ‘declamation’ as a synonym for ‘Vortrag’ when referring to the way in which a specific musical passage is conceived and executed); ‘aufführen’ (‘to perform’); ‘reproduzieren’ (the latinate equivalent for the German ‘nachschaffen’); ‘darstellen’ (‘to represent’); ‘Wiedergabe’ (‘rendition’); ‘spielen’ (‘to play’); and ‘musizieren’ (‘to play’, ‘to make music’). Some of the connotations of the word ‘nachschaffen’ from the original title of Kolisch's article are captured by Erwin Stein in the Introduction to his Form and Performance: ‘Music consists of sounds, and the word “form”, applied to music, means the arrangement of sounds.

• ‘Music in the Third Reich’ David Drew

• Ullmann, Schulhoff, Goldschmidt Michael Graubart

• Richard Strauss and the Symphony Michael Graubart

• Höller's ‘Pensées’ William Mival

• Rihm's ‘Time Chants’ Malcolm Miller

• ‘Life with an Idiot’ at the ENO Ronald Weitzman

• ‘The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit’ Michael Blake

• ‘The Woodlanders’ at Oxford Bret Johnson

• Jonathan Lloyd's ‘Blessed Days of Blue’ Malcolm Miller

• Bainbridge and Pehkonen Richard Leigh-Harris

• David Johnson's 12 Preludes and Fugues Neil Mackay

• Reservoir in Concert James Erber

• Hartmann and Blacher Guy Richards

• Lachenmann Chamber Music John Warnaby

• Karel Husa Ian Wellens

• Schulhoff, Haas, Krása and others Guy Rickards

• Herbert Howells choral works Bret Johnson

• Maw and Matthews Michael Oliver

• Gerald Barry and Edward Dudley Hughes David Clarke

• Tournemire's Symphonies Bret Johnson

• Christian Wolff and Górecki Ewan Allinson