If you’re like many Americans, you’ve likely never heard the music of Erwin Schulhoff. But Daniel Hope thinks you absolutely should.
Hope, the violinist and music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, is making the 20th-century Czech composer’s Double Concerto the centerpiece of the ensemble’s program this week.
Titled “Forbidden Music,” the program features works written by composers living under the shadow of oppressive regimes. Performances, March 21-24, are in Berkeley, Palo Alto, San Francisco and San Rafael.
Also included is “Tanec” by Hans Krása – who, like Schulhoff, died in a Nazi concentration camp. Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a and two Mendelssohn String Symphonies – the No. No. 10 in B minor and the No. 13 in C minor, “Sinfonie Satz” – complete the program.
For Hope, the Double Concerto is the main event. He and pianist Vanessa Perez will serve as the work’s soloists, and he thinks audiences will be surprised by its strengths.
“Schulhoff is an almost forgotten master from the turn of the century,” Hope said last week in a call from Germany, where he was leading a program with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. “The concerto comes from the late 1920s, and it’s an absolutely staggering piece, full of jazz, dance music and the kind of uncompromising quality that marked Schulhoff’s work.”
The Double Concerto was originally composed for flute, piano and strings; Hope transcribed the flute part for violin a few years back. He’s played it a lot since then, but never in the United States until now.
“It’s very virtuosic,” he says, “very flutelike in its leaps and jumps. That makes it a challenge to play on the fiddle, but it’s do-able.”
Born in 1894, Schulhoff was a child prodigy, a pianist championed by Antonin Dvorak. As a young man, he traveled to Paris and immersed himself in French culture, writing symphonies, concertos and chamber works. “He was friends with all the painters, dancers and artists of the day,” says Hope. “He became known as the Enfant Terrible of the music scene, much like a George Antheil or Stravinsky.
“His wit and humor comes out in his music – he was obsessed with dancing, and there’s always a dance rhythm in his music. Audiences love it, and this piece has this amazing energy in it.”
Sad to say, Schulhoff didn’t live a long life. In 1941, he was transported to Wůlzburg, a Bavarian concentration camp. He died there, of tuberculosis, in 1942.
Hope, who began researching composers of the era nearly 20 years ago, has interviewed camp survivors and made music by Jewish composers such as Schulhoff part of his repertoire.
“I’ve always found this idea of music and art that’s forbidden quite intriguing,” he says. “The idea was to bring various strands of my research into programs. Schulhoff and Krása were murdered by the Nazis. Then we have those suppressed under other circumstances – Shostakovich’s famous run-ins with the authorities and Mendelssohn, whose music was also banned by the Nazis. We know that the two symphonies on this program were performed in the concentration camps.”
Indeed, Hope says there’s something haunting about “Forbidden Music” – Schulhoff’s in particular. “The fact that his music was forgotten for so many decades is partly due to the fact that he was murdered,” he says. “He disappeared, and with him disappeared a great deal of music that was, in a sense, the completion of the Second Viennese School. We had masters like Schoenberg, who was able to escape. But those who were wiped out left a kind of black hole in the history of music. As a result, we’ve missed out on the music of Schulhoff and many others of his generation.”
Details: “Forbidden Music,” 7:30 March 21, First Congregational Church, Berkeley; 7:30 March 22, Oshman Jewish Community Center, Palo Alto; 7:30 March 23, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; 3 p.m. March 24, Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, San Rafael; $29-$61; www.ncco.org.
Three for the Weekend: Festival Opera’s Recital series presents soprano Shana Blake Hill, an alum of the Los Angeles Opera Resident Artist program. Accompanied by Victoria Kirsch, she’ll sing works by Handel, Faurė, Dvorak, Carlisle Floyd and Ricky Ian Gordon. Details: 7:30 p.m. March 21, Lesher Center, Walnut Creek, $40 general, $20 students; 925-943-7469, www.lesherartscenter.org. The Oakland Symphony presents “I Raise Up My Voice,” featuring singers from S.F. Opera’s Adler Fellowship Program joining Michael Morgan and the orchestra in Bernstein’s “Songfest”; works by Jessie Montgomery and Louise Farrenc complete the program. Details: 8 p.m. March 22, Paramount Theatre, $25-$90; 510-444-0802, www.oaklandsymphony.org. And Germany’s Faurė Quartett plays music by its namesake, along with works by Mozart and Robert Schumann. Details: 8 p.m. March 23, Trianon Theatre, San Jose; $15-$52, 408-995-5400, www.sjchambermusic.org.
Contact Georgia Rowe at growe@pacbell.net.