Two Austrian works written eighty years apart share this disc. One is the Cello Concerto by Friedrich Cerha (1926-2023), dedicated "in friendship" to Heinrich Schiff; the other is the Kammersymphonie in einem Satz of 1916 by Franz Schreker (1878-1934). Schiff is the soloist, and Peter Eötvös conducts the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra in both. Cerha is still best known for completing the third act of Berg's Lulu, and his long involvement with the Second Vienna School can be heard in the concerto. Schreker's piece belongs to the Vienna of the First World War, so the programme draws a line across the century.

Cerha began the concerto in 1989 with a Phantasiestück in C.'s Manier, which Schiff premiered in Vienna that November with the composer conducting. Seven years later it became the central movement of a three-movement concerto commissioned by the Berliner Festspiele. Schiff gave the first performance in September 1998 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Michael Gielen. This recording was made in September 2003 in Studio 5 of the Music Centre of the Netherlands Radio and Television in Hilversum, with Manfred Eicher as executive producer. It was released in August 2007, with a booklet essay by Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich.

The concerto lasts about 35 minutes, and its orchestra adds soprano saxophone, electric organ and three percussionists to the usual winds and strings. The outer movements are energetic, with a forceful pizzicato signal launching the dance-like finale. In the lyrical central movement the cello floats over wavering flutes and strings. Schreker wrote his Chamber Symphony for the centenary of the Vienna Academy, where it was first heard in March 1917. It folds the four movements of a symphony into one span of about 26 minutes, with flute and violins drifting over celesta, harmonium, piano and harp at the start.

The disc was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone, where Richard Whitehouse called this "now the version to have" of the Schreker. In BBC Music Magazine Matthew Rye found the concerto "a work of both substance and originality", noting the "reams of golden tone" Schiff draws in its central movement. German critics in Fono Forum and the Neue Musikzeitung praised the transparency and colour of Eötvös's readings.

This is the CD edition of ECM New Series 1887, first released in August 2007.