Erwin SCHULHOFF CHAMBER MUSIC String Sextet • Violin Sonata No
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Erwin SCHULHOFF CHAMBER MUSIC String Sextet • Violin Sonata No. 2 • Duo • Cinq Études de jazz Spectrum Concerts Berlin Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) popular entertainment culture of European origin. He adopting Janáček’s procedure for composing melodies, Chamber Music dedicated each piece to a musican active in that field and he also takes over the Czech’s art of fluid but included Robert Stolz and Eduard Künneke, whom one nevertheless clearly delineated structure. This finds Since the 1980s, when his work experienced a cautious held in a different location each year, famous musicians, associates more with operetta and popular song, expression in the numerous changes of tempo in the international renaissance, the compositions of Erwin in particular from Czechoslovakia, often performing them alongside the ragtime and novelty virtuoso Zez Confrey outer movements, among other things. Schulhoff, who died in 1942 in the Wülzburg internment with Schulhoff himself at the piano. and Paul Whiteman. But then, Stolz and Künneke also camp near Weißenburg in Bavaria, have gradually been In terms of composition, 1924 was a fruitful year for used the fashionable American dances of the day in their Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (1927) finding their way back into the concert hall. Nevertheless, Schulhoff. Among other works, he completed the Sextet cabaret and revue numbers. his work has not yet become part and parcel of the that had been lying unfinished since 1920. That same The Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, composed in 1927 professional solo, ensemble and orchestral repertoires. year he published an article to mark Leoš Janáček’s 70th Duo for Violin and Cello (1925) and premièred at the ISCM Festival in Geneva on 7th One of the signs that a composer’s œuvre has become an birthday in the Viennese music journal Der Anbruch. April 1929, builds on the experience Schulhoff gained by established part of the music scene is the existence of a Janáček wrote to thank him in May 1925: “You got so The dedication of the duo for strings – “to the master, writing the Duo and on the methods he employed there. (sometimes controversial) performance tradition. In the close to me in your article that I’d say our souls touched Leoš Janáček, with my respect” – is not a formality in The overall structure represents a move back towards the case of Schulhoff’s compositions, this is gradually coming each other. Thank you; you were speaking the truth. […] regard to the work. Janáček constructed his compositions classical model of a sonata in four movements. In the into being. Since its inception in 1988, one of the main You hit the mark.” Three months earlier Schulhoff had from small motivic cells. Sometimes he derived these opening movement, he uses a sonata form that has been, aims of Spectrum Concerts Berlin has been to actively completed his Duo for Violin and Cello, dedicating it to from Czech folk music, but more often from “speech as it were, geometrically sharpened. Both the first and encourage and to act as a catalyst for the development of “the master, Leoš Janáček”; in 1927 he wrote his Violin melodies”: he took note of how people said particular second themes comprise slightly contrasting sections – such traditions. Sonata No. 2, a work that he valued in compositional words or names, so expressing their emotions. Schulhoff Schulhoff multiplies the dualistic principle of the form by The four works on the present recording were all terms. In between, in 1926, he wrote the Études de Jazz, was inspired by this procedure. However, he did not take two. The two themes follow immediately one after the written in just under four years between 1924 and 1927, for piano, which he included many a time in his own the music in colloquial speech as his point of departure, other, their first appearance constituting the exposition during Schulhoff’s middle creative phase; only the first programmes as a concert pianist. but rather musical idiom. The first bars played by the violin and their variation and combination the development movement of the Sextet was composed earlier, in 1920. use the pentatonic scale that is the basis for many section, before they return in the same order but a slightly The period between the end of galloping inflation in Cinq Études de jazz (1926) folksongs and nursery rhymes. Little by little he adds amended form in the recapitulation and afford the violin in Germany in 1924 and the global economic crisis of 1929 further notes, and with them fresh colours, expanding and particular an opportunity for virtuosity in the coda. When was described as one of relative (economic and political) Schulhoff shared his fascination with jazz with many other compressing the tonal space traversed by his parts. writing the violin part, Schulhoff probably bore in mind stability in Europe. The same could be said of Schulhoff’s composers. Claude Debussy closed his cycle Children’s Transformation and alienation enable him to arrive at Alois Hába’s criticism of his Sonata for Violin Solo, development in the mid- and late 1920s, though with the Corner with the Golliwogg’s Cake-Walk; Paul Hindemith something fresh. The method is reminiscent of Cubism namely that it failed to exploit the instrument’s potential. emphasis on the “relative”. After sojourns in Dresden and Igor Stravinsky wrote ragtimes; in his adopted city, and its art of stylisation and of distorting perspective. The violin part in the sonata with piano accompaniment is (January 1919 to summer 1920), where he established a Paris, Schulhoff’s Czech compatriot Bohuslav Martinů The opening motif serves as an “original idea” in one brilliant and virtuosic, laced with all manner of technical concert series entitled “Werkstatt der Zeit” (“contemporary composed many jazz-inspired piano pieces as well as a way or another in all four movements. In the fiery second difficulties. workshop”) and became acquainted with the dadaists, in Jazz Suite and a piece for orchestra entitled Le Jazz; movement (headed Zingaresca – “in the gypsy style”) it is In the Finale Schulhoff keeps on coming back to the Saarbrücken (autumn 1920 to January 1922), where he Mátyás Seiber was the first musician to hold a chair in recognisable in rhythmically sharpened form in the cello first movement – right at the outset, but then also as the taught at the Conservatory and was bored stiff, but also jazz at the Conservatory in Frankfurt. Schulhoff’s 1920 melody. The calm third movement derives from a playful Finale develops. In doing so, he establishes a clear unity, got to hear several jazz bands, primarily in nearby France, declaration that “Music should, first and foremost, reordering – a kind of dicing of the thematic building but at the same time points to the infinite potential of and in Berlin (February 1922 to October 1923), where he produce physical well-being, ecstasy even, by means of blocks. In the fourth movement the dominant part is musical imagination, for each restatement is continued in enjoyed being close to like-minded artists, but was rhythm” underlines his affinity with jazz, as does a letter to derived from the “original idea” by omitting or modifying a new and different way, the dynamism of open form thus nonetheless unable to really settle, he and his family were Alban Berg in which he writes: “I have an absolute individual notes. For all its variety of character, this gives operating within the closed one. back living in his home-town, Prague. His works were passion for the dance in vogue and myself have times the work a powerful inner cohesion. On the one hand, Something comparable can be said about the detail being played throughout Europe at the relevant festivals when I dance with barladies night after night – purely out Schulhoff thereby realises a classical ideal: maximum of the interrelationships. Like the Duo, the Violin Sonata of contemporary music, especially in Donaueschingen of rhythmic intoxication and subconscious sensuality.” In diversity and variety, developing out of a single original derives from an original cell, the rhythm short–short–long. and at the annual gatherings of the IGNM (ISCM, his Cinq Études he stretched the definition of jazz quite unity and creating a new, differentiated unity in the In all the movements the main theme and opening theme International Society for Contemporary Music) that were considerably, not drawing a definite line between jazz and context of a larger whole. On the other hand, as well as start with it and develop from it and around it. That includes the inner movements, which Schulhoff framed as they are flung. The violence of march rhythms is Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) striking character pieces – the slow movment as an answered by a plaintive interjection whose repetition Kammermusik instrumental song over bell-like accompaniment and the briefly brings the music to a standstill. The Allegro risoluto third, the scherzo, as a burlesque in 5/8. Allusions to folk is a movement characterised by powerful, dense Die Kompositionen von Erwin Schulhoff, der 1942 im wechselnden Orten gespielt, bedeutende Interpreten music and the sonata’s recourse to classical structures expression that Schulhoff leads to the verge of eruption. It Internierungslager Wülzburg bei Weißenburg in Bayern insbesondere aus der Tschechoslowakei führten sie oft are reminiscent of Bartók, whom Schulhoff held in high is like a play in three short acts. The slow movement that starb, finden nach und nach wieder ins Konzertleben mit ihm selbst am Klavier auf. esteem. Schulhoff’s Second Sonata offers as laconic a Schulhoff places second makes for a quieter contrast. He zurück, seit in den 1980er-Jahren eine vorsichtige 1924 wurde für Schulhoff kompositorisch ein response to the Hungarian composer’s violin sonatas as constructs it out of two elements: a continuous movement internationale Renaissance seiner Musik einsetzte.