courtesy of Naxos of America
Last month Capriccio released a six-CD collection of the music of Erwin Schulhoff. For no apparent reason, Amazon.com attached the title “Schulhoff: Masterpieces” to the Web page for this release. This probably would have amused Schulhoff himself, particularly in light of the absurdist compositions that emerged under the influence of Dadaism.
However, Schulhoff went through an impressive variety of stylistic phases reflecting a wide diversity of influences; and the fact is that six CDs can hardly do justice to either the breadth or the depth of his efforts. To be fair, however, I have to confess that my own knowledge of Schulhoff’s music amounts to a limited sampling of his entire corpus. Thus, when this release was announced, I welcomed the opportunity to take what I could get.
The CDs themselves are organized by category. The first consists of orchestral music, two symphonies (the second and fifth) and the 1921 suite of jazz movements originally called In the New Style. The second CD offers three concertos, the Opus 43 (second) piano concerto, the Opus 63 double concerto for flute and piano, and the 1930 concerto for string quartet and wind ensemble (which may, or may not, have been Schulhoff’s reflection on Igor Stravinsky’s 1924 concerto for piano and wind instruments). There is also a witty “appendix” in the form of Schulhoff’s arrangement for full orchestra of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 129 solo piano rondo, best known as the “Rage Over a Lost Penny.” The next two CDs offer a variety of chamber music compositions, all for strings. The last two CDs consist entirely of piano music for either one or two pianists.
I have to say that it has been a bit frustrating to account for the Schulhoff corpus in any comprehensive way. I have already encountered two different single-CD albums of the “complete works” for violin and piano, the first of which I discussed on Examiner.com, followed by the second discussed on this site in November of 2016; and it was with a bit of relief that the contents of the two albums were identical! I was therefore glad that none of those (four) pieces were part of the Capriccio collection.
My other past resource involved Schulhoff’s piano music. Parnassus released a single CD of all the recordings made by Schulhoff himself at the keyboard, most of which involved his playing his own music. On what I had hoped would be a more thorough account, Grand Piano launched a project with Caroline Weichert to record the piano music; but, as of this writing, that has resulted in only three volumes. When those three CDs are compared with the two in the Capriccio collection, it is clear that Grand Piano had a ways to go before accounting for the entire corpus.
In the context of my own listening experiences, I would have to say that the two chamber music CDs provided the greatest draw on my attention. To be fair, however, much of the “draw” of that music came from the five pieces for string quartet composed in 1923, because I was fortunate enough to listen to the Telegraph Quartet perform those pieces this past December. While there are definitely jazzy elements in Schulhoff’s chamber music, there is also a much more extended scope of eclecticism. In contrast to David’s coat of many colors, Schulhoff’s chamber music canon is one of many different coats varying not only in colors but also in the style determining the cut of the coat, so to speak. All of the selections offered make for delightful listening; not to mention (at least in my case) a stronger craving to hear more of this work in a concert setting.
This is not to diminish the significance of the other four CDs in the collection. Taken as a whole, this recent release offers the best way to become acquainted with the unique and diverse methods that Schulhoff brings to his compositional efforts. The more one is drawn to his music, the greater the regret that this highly creative candle was snuffed out by the Nazis in the Wülzburg concentration camp on August 18, 1942, soon after the composer’s 48th birthday.
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