The Five Pieces are brief evocations of dance forms, carried through with no end of subtle humor. The players evince complete conviction in the worth of the music. The articulation and phrasing are excellent, with superb dynamic control, from the most whispery ppp to the strongest tutti accents. Their warmth of tone also contributes greatly to the likability of this music. For these performances, the Aviv Quartet deserves to have its name reversed.

Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942) had a sad life and career. It started out well; at the age of 10 he was recommended by Dvorák to study piano at the Prague Conservatory and then composition beginning at age 14 with Max Reger and Fritz Steinbach. Influenced at first by these composers, his music gained a certain amount of success, but after World War I he gravitated toward the Expressionism of the Second Vienna School and the Dadaistic influence of Georg Grosz, whose advocacy of jazz seeped into Schulhoff’s own work. In the early 1930s he changed his style again to neoclassicism, and turned to Soviet communism as what he perceived as a more benevolent solution to society’s ills than fascism or national socialism. This new political motivation led him to compose pieces with a definite Marxist slant. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in early 1939 Schulhoff, who had taken Soviet citizenship, was branded an enemy of the state and deported to a concentration camp in Wülzburg, where he died of tuberculosis in August 1942.

These string works from the mid 1920s represent Schulhoff’s jazz-and-expressionist period. They are bitonal in many places but never actually atonal, certainly not including any 12-tone rows. Harmonies are astringent but not too far outside the tonal system. The music is highly rhythmic, reflecting both the influence of jazz and Czech folk music, particularly the latter. The music is compact and tightly organized, his melodies brief and often angular, the interplay of instruments revealing complex counterpoint. It’s hard to believe they were considered highly radical works in their day; compared to what we have now, as well as to the far more astringent music of his Hungarian counterpart Béla Bartók, Schulhoff is downright accessible.

The Aviv Quartet, new to me, plays with excellent tone, rhythmic acuity, energy, and grace. It’s obvious that they have learned these pieces so well that they have internalized them...Naxos’s sound is crisp and clear, so that one can hear every nuance without putting reverberant goo between the performers and the listener.

But lucky for us all his music survives and seems to be undergoing a resurgence. A terrific place to start is with the release at hand, an excellent Naxos recording of his String Quartets. This is music with an Eastern European, Slavic, Semitic (?) sound to it. It’s very lovely, very rhythmic in parts, very melodically interesting and very well put-together. Think of the quartets of Janacek and Bartok (and Dvorak before them), then forget all of that because Schulhoff doesn’t channel their music in any direct way. He is simply working out of a musical mind-set that he in part shares with these three great composers. (Like Kafka and Musil, for a literary parallel). And in my humble opinion, Schulhoff’s Quartets hold their own in such illustrious company.

But I might have missed the impact of this music if it wasn’t for the exceptional performances of the Aviv Quartet. They are just fabulous. They have the Slavic-Semitic brio in full abundance, which is exactly what these quartets need. The Aviv Quartet play with great energy, passion, fire and rhythmic dash. Just beautiful!

To combine all of this and the peanuts Naxos asks you to pay to get a copy, well, I certainly would not hesitate to respectfully compel you to go and grab this one. In fact, here we are in May, but so far without hesitation this release is MY SLEEPER OF THE YEAR. Set your farmer’s alarm clock for early and go out and get a copy before they all disappear! Seriously though, I am enchanted with this release. And I am quite surprised, because I had no idea that Schulhoff’s music was this good.

The Aviv Quartet may not posesses the lightness and conversational demeanor that give the Kocian Quartet’s Supraphon recordings an idiomatic edge, yet the Aviv’s glitch-free technical sheen and penchant for slower tempos allows inner voices more prominence in thicker passages, such as in the First quartet’s Allegro giocoso movement. Similarly, the dances so affectionately ribbed in the 1923 Five Pieces benefit from the Kocian Quartet’s more characterfully inflected phrasing, yet the Aviv group’s stronger contouring of the pizzicato/arco alterations in the Tarantella and in the Second quartet’s Allegro gajo will cause listeners to sit up and take notice.

Pressed to choose, I’d recommend the Kocian first, if only because they also include Schulhoff’s delightful String Quartet No. 0. However, Naxos’ modest cost, vividly detailed sonics, and excellent annotations enhance the Aviv Quartet’s polished and serious-minded achievement. Well worth hearing.

The First String Quartet comprises three studies in rhythm followed by an agonized slow movement. The first movement is jaunty and refreshingly melodic, with echoes of Stravinsky in an ebullient mood. The second movement is more menacing, the central section’s thematic material given slithering accompaniment, but it is the slow movement, which serves as the quartet’s finale, that acts as this work’s emotional core. 

Of the three works on the disc, the First Quartet was most successful during Schulhoff’s lifetime, and its appeal is immediate. This is an engaging and rewarding piece waiting for a concert-hall revival, and, since it is a scant seventeen minutes, the quartet could safely be squeezed onto many a recital program. 

The Five Pieces are a suite of dance movements which seem straightforward: a Viennese waltz, a serenade and a tango are among their number. But these works are not for the faint of heart; they are traditional dances viewed through the prism of Stravinsky or, perhaps, Schoenberg, and, like Ravel’s La Valse but with more of a bite, they are probably meant to some degree to be satirical. The waltz is almost unrecognizable as such in the opening bars, but soon becomes irresistible; the other dances are similarly magnetic. The tarantella is a good example: relatively straightforward in form, the harmonies nevertheless make us feel as if we are in the musical equivalent of a house of mirrors. 

The Second String Quartet, composed just a year after the First in 1925, is arguably a masterpiece. The first movement finds Schulhoff’s tense style slightly matured, and the slow theme and variations begin with a beautiful viola solo. The highlight of the variations is an amiable folksy dance beginning at roughly the three-minute mark; another intriguing dance, with the unique marking “Allegro gajo,” follows in the third movement, but the finale is a fierce, very modern battle with some of the most thrilling unison playing on the album. 

Fortunately for Schulhoff’s legacy, these are terrific performances. The Aviv Quartet have been playing together for a decade now, since they inaugurated their career amid a flurry of international competition victories in 1999, and they sound simply fantastic on this disc. The playing is electric; no position is a weak link. Schulhoff’s music for string quartet has been assembled on another disc, a 1994 Capriccio release, but this Naxos album is more widely available, and at half the price. Neither represents the complete quartet music (a Divertimento has gone unrecorded), but only completists will really be bothered by this quibble. 

A terrific introduction to Schulhoff’s chamber music, then, although there are other works (like the surprising Concertino for Flute, Viola and Double Bass) which are more immediately appealing, and although other albums may simply have more music (this one is barely fifty minutes long). But this recording will be an eye-opener for those who prefer their string quartets to be perfume-soaked romantic treasures, and a treasure for admirers of modern chamber music. A good way to expand one’s horizons.