Four Compositions by Luigi Nono at Frederick Loewe Theater "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," the philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote in what became one of his most quoted lines. It is also among his least understood: Adorno did not mean to reject the viability of artistic response to atrocity but rather to suggest that adulation for art produced by a culture capable of enacting the Holocaust made it impossible to criticize that culture meaningfully. Four Compositions by Luigi Nono featured Stacey Mastrian, onstage, and Alvise Vidolin at the Frederick Loewe Theater. "Perennial suffering," Adorno clarified in a late essay, "has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream." And what is "Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto in Auschwitz" ("Remember What They Did to You in Auschwitz"), a 1966 tape work by the Italian composer Luigi Nono, if not a profoundly disturbing scream? As musical fragments and metallic howls erupt, it sounds as if a civilization were being ripped to shreds. In that piece, presented during a concert at the Frederick Loewe Theater in Greenwich Village on Monday evening, and in others like it, Nono railed against intolerance and injustice with the most radical modes of musical expression at his disposal. In another work on the program, "La Fabbrica Illuminata" ("The Illuminated Factory," 1964), Nono weaves a solo vocalist's plaintive lines through jarring fields of grinding industrial noise and political mob chants. The concert, the second event in a brief but illuminating series presented by New York University's Steinhardt School and the Electronic Music Foundation, was also a potent reminder that Nono is valued for more than his artistic activism. The austere splendor of his fragmentary, crystalline musical language, an extension of Webern's style, was emphasized in ..." sofferte onde serene ..." (..." suffering quiet waves ...," 1977), played authoritatively and beautifully by the pianist Stefan Litwin. Likewise, in "Con Luigi Dallapiccola" (1979), for six percussionists and live electronics, I admired in roughly equal measure Nono's imaginative, exacting manipulation of sound, space and silence; the deft, skillful work of the NYU Percussion Ensemble, precisely conducted by David Fein; and the intricate choreography by which these players efficiently marshaled dozens of implements and as many techniques. And along with their intended capacity to disturb and provoke, "Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto in Auschwitz" and "La Fabbrica Illuminata" were equally apt to inspire. Each was admirable, even lovely, in its own way, offering rich, engrossing combinations of sound sources deployed with originality, boldness and an ear for musical symmetry. Stacey Mastrian, a soprano, provided intensity, focus and a warm, passionate sound to "La Fabbrica Illuminata." And all the works on the program benefited from the exacting supervision of Alvise Vidolin, a Nono associate and the concert's artistic director, and Thomas Beyer, its technical director.