Gramophone Magazine
February 2024
Editor's Choice

Herbert Schuch (piano), WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Tung-Chieh Chuang

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15
Schulhoff: Concerto for Piano & Small Orchestra, Op. 43, WV 66
Ludwig van Beethoven, Erwin Schulhoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15

Pianist Herbert Schuch looks at the connections between Beethoven's Piano Concertos and the Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra by Erwin Schulhoff.

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)

"I’m happy to report that this Beethoven performance is a delight overall. Schuch comes across as a sparkling raconteur, one who knows how to make his storytelling especially vivid, whether he’s pellucidly articulating a florid passage or sculpting a melody." - Gramophone Magazine, February 2024