E. Schulhoff - Five Pieces for String Quartet | Alla Tarantella 

E. Schulhoff - Five Pieces for String Quartet | Alla Tarantella
Recorded Live on October 14th, 2014 in Nichols Concert Hall, Evanston, IL.
Violins: David Lisker and Regi Papa, violins
Viola: Kaya Katarzyna Bryla - Weiss
Cello: Michael Katz
"Alla Tarantella" from Five Pieces for String Quartet by Erwin Schulhoff was a part of "Echos of Hope" series presented by the Lisker Foundation.
For more information visit: www.davidliske...
"Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, one of the most gifted of a lost generation of composers to die in concentration camps, was born ahead of his time. His magpie-like interest in music of all sorts would make him right at home in today’s culture. In the 1920s, when he wrote the Five Pieces, Schulhoff was a prominent pianist and composer, appearing regularly at international contemporary music festivals. His interests tended toward modernism, often combining Arnold Schoenberg’s free atonality with the strong dance rhythms of folk music. As a pianist, Schulhoff championed the quarter-tone music of his fellow countryman Alois Hába. He soaked up the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky. He followed developments in Paris and was an enthusiast of the music of Darius Milhaud and other members of Les Six. He also played in nightclubs and drew inspiration from the then new and exciting phenomenon of jazz and ragtime, integrating them into his music as successfully as any composer of the time. Like his almost exact contemporary Bohuslav Martinů, Schulhoff was something of an outsider. He wrote the first of his five works for string quartet while still a student. The Five Pieces are the first of his mature works for the medium and had immediate success when given their premiere at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Salzburg in 1924. Theseshort pieces show considerable technical skill and confidence, great variety with economic means, and rhythmic ingenuity. Together, as a series of complementary dance movements, they bring a modern face to the tradition of the Baroque suite.
The first piece is a Viennese waltz with an edge, cunningly notated. Next comes a 5/8 serenata, a stylized dance with a Spanish flavor whose recurring rhythm ranges from the exuberant to the ghostly. The rhythm and energy of the third dance bring to mind the music of Béla Bartók in a rhythmically driven piece reminiscent of the Czech skocná. The two closing pieces are again finely drawn dances, deriving from the Argentinean tango and Neapolitan tarantella respectively. Speaking of his passion for dances of all types, Schulhoff said, reasonably enough, “If Bach and his contemporaries-not to mention Mozart, Brahms, and Schubert-wrote and loved the dances of their day, why shouldn’t I love and write these dances of my own time?"
Keith Horner
Video courtesy of the Lisker Music Foundation. www.liskermusi...