Hot Music - Schulhoff / Kathryn Stott
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- BIS
- February 1, 2003
SCHULHOFF Suite dansante en Jazz. Piano Sonata No. 1. 5 Etudes de Jazz. Second Suite for Piano. 11 Inventions. Hot Music: 10 Syncopated Etudes • Kathryn Stott (pn) • BIS 1249 (79:40)
In the record companies’ zeal to unearth music by Jewish composers who were hounded by the Nazis, Erwin (or Ervin) Schulhoff was one of those revived, and in many ways he was one of the most interesting musically. A fervent admirer of the “hot dance music” of the late 1910s and 1920s, Schulhoff would, by his own admission, dance his pants off in nightclubs, intoxicated by the rhythms, until he entered a trance-like state of being. That he was able to transmit these feelings to his compositions and produce something of lasting value is even more astonishing when you consider that, to Schulhoff, hot ragtime and novelty tunes were what he perceived as jazz.
Thus, in this remarkable collection, nearly every set of numbers has a tango, a slow tune (titled either “Chanson” or “Slow”), and either a toccata or a gigue (or both). You can perceive the kind of influences that informed Schulhoff’s music from the dedications of his Five Etudes de Jazz (1926): the “Charleston” is dedicated to novelty pianist Zez Confrey, the “Blues” to Paul Whiteman (a bandleader who never played a real blues in his life), the “Chanson” to Robert Stolz (the operetta composer), the “Tango” for Eduard Künnecke (another operetta composer), and the “Toccata sur le shimmy ‘Kitten on the Keys’ de Zez Confrey” to Alfred Baresel (founder of the German jazz movement in the 1920s, and the first German to write seriously about the music), but look at the piece Schulhoff chose to transform. For anyone who has heard it, Zez Confrey’s Kitten on the Keys is a lively and imaginative piece, but a ragtime piano work, not jazz. But if you know the Confrey original, you’ll be absolutely stunned by the set of variations that Schulhoff created out of it, and therein lay his genius. His sense of jazz may have been a bit naïve, but his compositional style was anything but. On the contrary, his rigorous musical mind made something fascinating, worthy, and noble of the sometimes quite common materials he filtered through his mind.
And pianist Stott is with Schulhoff every step of the way. Obviously a labor of love for her, she tears into this music with an enthusiasm and verve that is simply astounding, finding exactly the right nuances and moods for each set of pieces. Whether or not you like jazz- or ragtime-influenced classical music, you’ll find Stott’s playing here remarkable in every sense. I would have preferred a little less reverb around the piano, but other than that, this disc is perfect.
Thus, if you’ve ever wondered if Nikolai Kapustin had a forebear, wonder no longer. Pick this disc up and marvel at the musical imagination of Erwin Schulhoff.
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
Product Description:
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Release Date: February 01, 2003
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UPC: 7318590012499
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Catalog Number: BIS-CD-1249
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Label: BIS
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Number of Discs: 1
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Composer: Erwin, Schulhoff
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Performer: Kathryn, Stott