Admirable though Steffen Schleiermacher’s enterprise is, in ferreting out obscure compositions by some of the many who studied with Schoenberg, this selection (recorded in a rather clangorous church acoustic) underlines the fact that only a few of those students went on to compositional distinction and by no means all of those wrote “Schoenbergian” music.

The six short Primitivi by Natalia Prawossudowitsch (1899-1988) were composed just before she encountered Schoenberg in Berlin and are closer to Prokofiev or Bartók than to anything (Austro-)German. The best that can be said is that they don’t outstay their welcome. The same is true of Widmungen by Erich Schmid (1907-2000), who eventually found success as conductor rather than composer, and the rather un‑childlike Kinderstücke by Peter Schacht (1901‑45). The Little Suite (1949) by Leon Kirchner (1919-2009) is also a very desultory affair, embodying a rather wishy-washy neo-classicism closer to some Hindemith than to any Schoenberg.

In their very different ways, both Nikos Skalkottas and Marc Blitzstein were among the more accomplished and characterful of Schoenberg’s students, though Skalkottas’s Suite No 3 is a rather rough and ready example of his work. Blitzstein’s Sonata (1927) is perhaps all the better for being more Stravinskian than Schoenbergian, while Lou Harrison’s equally un‑Schoenberg-like Sarabande (1937) was written five years before he attended classes with the master. When it comes to reactions against the great father-figure, however, none was more thoroughgoing than John Cage: the version of Variations I (1958) which Schleiermacher offers is a refreshing antidote to the neo-classicism prevalent elsewhere.

The two short Schoenberg pieces placed first on this disc provide masterclasses in the presentation of purposeful yet poetically imaginative substance: qualities that other composers might occasionally match but which could never be taught, even by Schoenberg.