Schulhoff: String Quartets (Nos 1/ 2/ Five Pieces) [CD]

This recording offers major additions to the String quartet repertoire. Admittedly, they've now been well recorded elsewhere: a heartening fact given the composer's almost total neglect following his early death at the Terezin Concentration Camp. It's good to know that the recorded competition in these works is fierce but these performances certainly compare well.

Of the works; they were all written within little more than a couple of years of each other. Despite that there is a significant shift in style from the First Quartet to the Five Pieces and Second Quartet. The First Quartet has a lighter touch, quite folksy with a spirit of rustic dance along the way. This is balanced by a longer final andante - a little like Bartok's use of night music in the finale of his Second Quartet. Schulhoff's andante, admittedly doesn't set out to be quite so intense.

What is clear from this first work is that Schulhoff had taken to the medium like a duck to water. He had written, earlier a Quartet no 0, which apparently was more weighted in a late romantic idiom. This First Quartet is more relaxed - somewhere between Dvorak and Martinu. No wonder listeners took to this work instantly. The First may be in a generally lighter vein than the other works but it isn't not lacking in substance either.

The rhythmic explosiveness of Bartok informs the Five Pieces and the Second Quartet as well as the sardonic wit of Shostakovich. The Five Pieces - all with dance titles - promises something of a lightweight suite. What you get is something quite different. The dance forms are just a start point for more complex harmonic and rhythmic writing along with the above mentioned sardonic humour. There's more than a hint of middle period Shostakovich Quartets about this music. Even without using traditional classical forms this is a full blown and weighty quartet in its own right. These Dances pre date the First Quartet but have much more in common with the Second.

The Second Quartet, from 1925, captures this shift still further as the counterpoint becomes denser and there is more than a hint of Alban Berg in the slow movement and finale. It hasn't been as popular a work as the First Quartet but is a major piece, arguable a more substantial work than the First even, that deserves more persistence from the listener. There a folk dance element to the scherzo and the first movement in parts, but we're much closer to Bartok than Dvorak here. The shifts in tempo in the slow movement and finale are reminscent of Janacek albeit in less romantic vein. As dense and rhythmically powerful as the work is Schulhoff makes his musical arguments with great economy with no movement ever outstaying its welcome or failing to make its point.

What the Aviv Quartet capture well is this shift in style from the "lighter" First to the "weighty" and more troubled Second. Their playing reflects this very well, making the strongest possible case for these marvellous works. That's not to say this is the best recording available - there are others, which I'm not familiar with. One reservation here is that we only get a little over 50 minutes of music. I wonder if they could have fitted the earlier quartet or some other chamber work on the disc.

Reservations aside though, I'll give this Five Stars because Schulhoff's music thoroughly deserves the attention it is starting to get and this recording is a great addition. Thank you, once again to Naxos.