Ron Chaplin reports:

>Folks, I've just finished listening to Duos for violin & cello, BIS-CD-916,
>Oleh Krysa (violin) and Torleif Thedeen (cello).  It's a delightful disc,
>beautifully performed and recorded.  ...
>
>To my ears, Schulhoff's duo rightfully deserves a place on this disc along
>with the other more famous composers.  ...
>
>Is anyone familiar with his work, and who could give me some
>recommendations of recordings? [...]

And I reply:  Schulhoff is a fascinating figure.  That he was erased
from musical history for nearly half a century is all the more troubling
because so much of his music is not merely of very high quality but of an
immediately appealing sort.  He was rather well-known in cognoscentric
circles at the peak of his career [say, 1922-1933], and not merely within
Czechoslovakia and central Europe.  The Flonzaley Quartet had his first
string quartet in their regular repertoire and played it in the USA in the
20s; the Amar-Hindemith Quartet played the second quartet and made a major
premiere of his string sextet at Salzburg in 1924.  Major soloists,
ensembles, and orchestras in Europe gave numerous premieres and follow-up
performances of his works.  Schott and Universal published his best works
and promoted them vigorously.  The high trajectory of his music of the
20ths was arrested by the composer himself, who, when presented with the
political options of his day, found communism more appealing than the
alternatives.  He abandoned chamber music in favor of a self-invented
version of socialist realism, which may be heard in his oratorio setting
of The Communist Manifesto and in all of his symphonic works from 1933 on.
When the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia, Schulhoff hasd already taken
Soviet citizenship, which protected him from arrest [but made it no easier
for him to find work] until June of 1941, when he was rounded up with many
others and sent to Wulzburg, a Bavarian labor camp where the work was
rock-quarrying.  He died there, reportedly of tuberculosis [or by other
reports, typhus] little more than a year later.

As for the music:  his German and Austrian publishers found it necessary
to suppress it.  I discovered Schulhoff's string chamber music in a job lot
of pocket scores bought very cheaply by mailorder from a Musikantiquariat
in Tutzing near Munich ca.  1966.  In the same period, another European
source [Peter Riethus in Vienna] turned up a 10" monaural LP of his String
Quartet No.  1, and a 12" monaural containing his Five Pieces for String
Quartet.  The Czechs continued to remember Schulhoff in such occasional
issues, but the rest of the world did not.  No, not quite true:  Crystal
Records in Sedro Woolley, WA put out a collection of trios d'anches
[oboe/clarinet/bassoon] containing a Divertimento by Schulhoff.  I
regularly plied musicians with this stuff, but it was not until 1984, when
Gidon Kremer encountered the string sextet that the ball finally began to
roll.  An ECM set from the Lockenhaus Festival circulated documents of live
performance of the major chamber music, and others were not slow to take it
up in concert and in the recording studio.  There must now be at least
sixty CDs devoted in whole or in major part to Ervin Schulhoff's music.

I have thirty or so, and have selected a handful to recommend, in my own
quite arbitrary ordering.

[1] Capriccio 10463.  String Quartet No.  1 [1924]; String Quartet No.  2
[1925] Five Pieces for String Quartet [1923].  Petersen Quartet.

[2] Capriccio 10539.  String Quartet in G, op 25 [1918]; Sonata for Violin
solo [1927]; Duo, violin and cello [1925]; Sextet, 2 violins, 2 violas, 2
cellos [1924] Petersen Quartet, violist Rainer Kimstedt, cellist Michael
Sanderling.

[3] Praga PR 255 006.  Sonata No.  2, violin and piano [1927]:  Jiri
Tomasek/ Josef Ruzicka.  Sonata for solo violin [1927]:  Antonin Novak.
Duo, violin and cello [1925] Antonin Novak/Vaclav Bernasek.  Partita for
Piano [1922]:  Boris Krajny.  String Quartet No.  1 [1924]:  Talich
Quartet.  This excellent survey appears to be out of print.

[4] Supraphon 11 2171 2:  Piano Cycles, 1919-1939.  Esquisses de Jazz
[1927]; Ostinato [1923]; Music for Piano, op 35 [1920]; Eleven Inventions
[1921]; Ten Piano Pieces, op 30 [1919]; Studien [2 piano pieces, 1936].
Tomas Visek, pianist.  http://www.musicabona.com/catalog1/112171-2.html

[5] Supraphon 11 1870 2:  Jazz-inspired piano works:  Five Picturesques;
Partita; Five Etudes de Jazz; Hot Music [Ten syncopated Etudes]; Suite
dansante en jazz.  Tomas Visek, pianist.
http://www.musicabona.com/catalog1/111870-2.html

[6] London 444 819:  "Concertos alla jazz" [CD title, not quite on the
mark].  Concerto for piano and small orchestra, op 43 [1923]; Double
Concerto for flute, piano and double string orchestra [1927]; Concerto for
String Quartet and Wind Orchestra [1930].  Five Etudes de Jazz, nos.  2-4;
Esquisses de Jazz, nos.  4-5; Rag-Music for Piano, nos.  3,4,7, and 8
[played by the composer, recorded by Polydor in 1928].  The modern
recordings are by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Andreas
Delfs; Aleksandr Madzar, pianist; Bettina Wild, flute; Hawthorne String
Quartet.

[7] Supraphon 11 2160 2:  Symphony No.  1 [1925]; Symphony No.  2 [1932].
Prague Radio Symphony/Vladimir Valek
http://www.musicabona.com/catalog1/112160-2.html

If you explore the Musica Bona site you will find many more Schulhoff
recordings.  That's a reliable and amazingly cheap Czech source for Czech
and German CDs.  I prefer the Petersen Quartet performances to Supraphon's
Kocian Quartet, which is bigger-toned and rather heavy-handed.  Right now,
the Petersen Quartet Capriccio discs are offered by Berkshire Record Outlet
at something like $4.99 apiece.  I'd grab 'em before they run dry.

I seem to recall that Steve Schwartz reviewed some Schulhoff in this list
and therefore probably also in Classm-l.  A search of the archives for both
lists should turn them up.

John Wiser
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