What is it about Franz Schubert, in particular, that has driven modern composers to revisit him in ways that surely would have shocked the Austrian master, who died in 1828? My library also contains “The Alternative Schubertiade” (CRI CD 809), a collection of hauntings and exorcisms by composers from New York City’s downtown scene, including Phil Kline (“Franz in the Underworld”), David First (“Thought You Said Sherbert”), and D. J. Firehorse (“Shoebird”). The present recording is called “Schubert Dialog,” and it is the sister of “Schubert Epilog,” another offering by Nott and the Bambergers (Tudor 7131). The latter CD includes music by Berio, Henze, Reimann, Schwertsik, and Zender. Is it open season on Schubert? This seems as good a place as any to mention that the present performers have earned the right to do this, I suppose, because they also have recorded—for Tudor, again—Schubert’s complete symphonies, more or less as Schubert imagined them.

We have three centuries of German composers here. Dieter Schnebel (b. 1930) taught Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952), who in turn taught Jörg Widmann (b. 1973). I don’t know where Bruno Mantovani (b. 1974) fits in, but it seems he is no relation to the other musical Mantovani: the king of Easy Listening.

Indeed, Mit Ausdruck is not easy listening, with or without capital letters. This is a tense and exciting showpiece for bass clarinet and orchestra. It is based on phrases and motifs from the piano accompaniments of Schubert’s songs. For example, the first portion of the 15-minute work is based on Gretchen am Spinnrade —specifically, on the piano’s imitation of the spinning wheel. To me, anyway, Mantovani’s Schubertian antecedents are mostly unrecognizable. As a result, I hear Mit Ausdruck not as a consecration (or desecration) of Schubert, but simply as a dynamic exploration of avant-garde playing techniques. The timbres aren’t always pleasant, but they are consistently fascinating.

Lied für Orchester is nearly 30 minutes long. In this work, Widmann examines what happens when you take Schubertian melody and push it to extremes of intensity. At times, the music cracks under the strain, crumbles, cries, or falls silent, only to soldier on. There are brief allusions to several of Schubert’s works, but it was Widmann’s intention, apparently, to create and then inflate the impression of Schubert without consistently resorting to quotation. What does this sound like? Much of the Lied reminds me of the work of Valentin Silvestrov—for example, the musical “postludes” presented in his Fifth Symphony.

Rihm’s Erscheinung is subtitled “sketches after Schubert for nine strings (three violins, three violas, and three cellos) and piano ad libitum.” After a glacial piano prelude, the nine strings commence a unison “invocation ritual” in which the composer’s spirit is summoned. Once it is, it seems rather upset about having been raised from the dead. Rhythms characteristic of Schubert “wink on and off like wraiths, familiar yet intangible islands in a manic maelstrom of tremoli, obstinate figurations, chordal explosions.” This description (from Ellen Kohlhaas’s booklet notes) is so evocative that Rihm’s actual music pales in comparison, I am sorry to say. I found Erscheinung to be the least effective of these four works.

The most recognizable chunks of Schubert appear in Schnebel’s Schubert-Phantasie , the fifth in a series of “Re-Visions” also devoted to Bach, Webern, Beethoven, and Wagner. Schnebel divides his orchestra into two sections. One section takes phrases and motifs from Schubert’s Piano Sonata in G (D. 894) and passes them around from instrument to instrument or from group to group, creating an “analytical” constant shifting of timbres. The other section, comprised entirely of strings, forms a “homogenous yet iridescent and oscillating stratum” of sound (Kohlhaas again)—or, as Schnebel describes it, a Blendwerk (mirage or illusion). In other words, the Schubertian fragments are analyzed and partly obscured at the same time. The Schubert-Phantasie is really quite pretty, although I did not find it as striking as the works by Widmann and Mantovani.

The performances? With nothing to compare them to, I can guess only that Nott and the Bamberg Symphony have done a bang-up job here. At any rate, I was impressed. The engineering allows this avant-garde but not overly “difficult” music to shimmer brightly and to stupefy the listener with its moments of force. In Mit Ausdruck , the bass clarinet is very far forward, but I didn’t mind, given the virtuosity of Billard’s playing.

It’s not for everyone, certainly, but I found this “Schubert Dialog” to be a worthwhile adventure.

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle