Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Candida Thompson - The Bohemian Album: Dvorak, Haas & Schulhoff [SACD] (2009) [DSD64] DSF + HDTracks

The Bohemian AlbumAmsterdam Sinfonietta has combined aromantic masterpiece of the string orchestrarepertoire with two wild compositions from theinter-war period. Dvo?ák, Haas, and Schulhoffhardly make a conventional mixture, but allthree of these composers had their roots in aregion which was known for many centuriesas “Bohemia.” One can hear this commonground in the rhythmic diversity, the influenceof folk music, and the melodic inventivenessthat characterizes their music. Haas andSchulhoff were part of a very promising groupof composers whose music was proclaimed“entartet” [degraded] at the end of the 1930s.Fortunately, their music has been rediscoveredand performed in recent decades. Themusic of Haas and Schulhoff is refreshinglyrebellious and original, and forms a contrastwith Dvo?ák’s romantic Serenade. Marijn vanProoijen wrote out a beautiful double-basspart for the works of Haas and Schulhoff,which were originally conceived for stringquartet.

Though only Dvorák’s Serenade is familiar here, and is given a performance of great friendliness and charm, a firm historical thread links the three works. Pavel Haas was a great loss to the tradition, a Janácek pupil who understood what his teacher had to offer and produced music of much gaiety and exuberance right up to his dying days. The booklet does not mention that these were in the Terezín concentration camp when he was only 45. This is an early piece (1925), with influences including Czech folk scenes with the grinding glissandos of wagons being hauled, beautiful long nocturnal melodic lines, and in the finale a kind of macabre exuberance that includes contributions from a percussion section (some work lists describe it as a jazz band). If this is not such a stylistic jumble as it sounds, it is because Haas’s vivid ear manages to provide some kind of unity.
Ervín Schulhoff, whose death at 48 in a concentration camp also goes unmentioned in the booklet-note, was encouraged as a boy by Dvorák and developed a range of interests that included jazz and the microtonal music of Hába. His quick ear for parody shows here in five witty miniatures: an “Alla valse viennese” in which the music seems to be irritably challenging the inexorable 3/4 rhythm, a blithe Serenade, a bouncy “Alla czeca” that doesn’t take national rhythms too seriously, a perilously languorous Tango and a furious concluding Tarantella. None of it amounts to much but is entertaining enough, especially when played with the cheerful abandon it is here.