Adorno’s avant-garde turn amazed his old colleagues like Steuermann and Krenek

Evidence

Eduard Steuermann, who had been Adorno’s piano teacher in Vienna and was one of the great interpreters of the Schoenberg school, and Ernst Krenek, who had taken part in discussions with Adorno since the 1920s and was one of the most significant modern composers, although he did not form a school, were both amazed. `You are the young man again, identifying yourself with all the recent trends, and I am the old mannow a conservative,’ Steuermann wrote to Adorno on his sixtieth birthday. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2202