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Berlin 1923, Beethoven & Schulhoff
Ludwig van Beethoven - Erwin Schulhoff

Berlin 1923, Beethoven & Schulhoff

Herbert Schuch

Label: CAvi
Format: CD
Barcode: 4260085535392
barcode
Catalog number: AVI 8553539
Releasedate: 01-12-23
- HERBERT SCHUCH is not only a a most telented and gifted pianist, but he favour also very much to bring diverse formats and musical styles together, and proofing it by selecting related music

- Beethoven and the 100 years later born ERWIN SCHULHOFF do not have much in common except one major initiative: They both were inovators:: Beethoven created so much the clear structure of the classical style, whilst Schulhoff integratetd many musical styles of of the non-classical world, i.e. jazz elements and some different instruments.

- Also in 1923 Schulhoff – himself an excellent pianist – began to wirght cadenzas to the Beethoven conertos 1-4; specifically this is the place to understand how Schulhoff intensly delt with the Beethoven material.
Beethoven und Schulhoff in Dialogue

Schuch: “Indeed, it’s quite exciting to look at what was going on exactly 100 years ago – perhaps because 1923 doesn’t seem all that distant to us. Certain events and circumstances seem to mirror one another a century apart. From a musical point of view, Erwin Schulhoff’s piano concerto is a truly interesting work that has not attained the recognition it deserves. . …

In terms of style, the piano concerto, composed between 11 June and 10 July 1923, is one of those works where Schulhoff radically deals with the dance types of jazz, which had crossed the Atlantic at the end of the First World War and spread out from Paris until taking all of Europe by storm….. No other pair of composers could be more different – on paper – than these two.

Schulhoff always took a decisive stance against traditionalism. Indeed, he may have been something of an iconoclast, but he was also a talented and well-trained pianist – a pianist who wanted to earn success in that very role. Of course, Schulhoff studied the Beethoven concertos, performed them, and ultimately also took the opportunity (like many other composers before him) to put his stamp on these works by writing his own cadenzas……

…It was also in Berlin – in February 1923, to be exact – that Schulhoff conceived and worked out the cadenzas for the first four Beethoven piano concertos …….“(Excerpts from the booklets notes)