Stanford Performs Schulhoff Quartet

It was gratifying to hear a living, breathing example of the work of Erwin Schulhoff, the much written and talked about but rarely performed Prague-born (in 1894) composer, when his Quartet No. 1 was presented by the Stanford String Quartet at Glendale’s Alex Theatre on Sunday.

Schulhoff, who died in a German concentration camp in 1942, was among the first classically trained exponents of jazz--as pianist and composer--an advocate of microtonal music and Marxism’s leading musical polemicist outside the Soviet Union.

His 1924 quartet, however, is neither jazzy, polemical nor avant-garde. The only aspect of Schulhoff’s life it obviously mirrors is an identification with the folk dance traditions of his Czech forebears, Smetana, Dvorak and, in the third of its four brief movements, Janacek, cloaked in a keen-edged Stravinskyan lightness of sonority. In the poignant finale, however, the mood turns more austere, after the manner of Bartok.

If no strong individual voice is displayed, this is nevertheless superbly crafted, entertaining music, which the Stanford Quartet--violinists Phillip Levy and Susan Freier, violist Benjamin Simon and cellist Stephen Harrison, artists in residence at Stanford University--delivered with becoming wit, polish and rhythmic dash.

Elsewhere, in Haydn’s Quartet in D, Opus 20, No. 4, and Ravel’s sole work in the medium, one felt the presence of skilled players but also a lack of intensity. Haydn’s bracing edginess was buffed away, while Ravel’s dreaminess lacked the requisite counterweight of passion and tonal richness.