Dip Your Ears, No. 202 (Schulhoff on the Piano)

E.Schulhoff, Piano Works: Sonata No.2; Five Pittoresques op.31; Two Pieces; Music for Piano op.35; Esquisses de Jazz, Caroline Weichert Grand Piano

E.Schulhoff, Sonatas Nos.1 & 3; Improvisations de Jazz; 5 Burlesques op.23; 5 Grotesques op.21; Five Pittoresques op.31; Ironies op.34 et al., M.Babinsky Phoenix UK | DE | FR

Sonatas and other Rarities

With deft tenacity, humor, and grit, Caroline Weichert does her part to bring Erwin Schulhoff’s piano works to life in her Schulhoff-survey which includes Pittoresken (of which “In futurum” is a part). Keith Jarrett could have been inspired by Schulhoff’s Second Sonata; its slow movement especially is a dreamy slice of quasi-improvisatory bliss. Mechanical rigor sits easily side by side with Jazz influences in Esquisses de Jazz and catchy Charleston comes with classical variation forms.

Margarete Babinsky (with her partners where four hands are needed) is equally enticing on her 2 CD disc and complements Weichert’s second volume very well. The first sonata, dedicated to Thomas Mann, could be placed anywhere on an imagined continuum between Prokofiev and Antheil. The Jazz Improvisations are amazingly effective good-mood music, impossibly charming and unabashedly easy on the ears. If hotel lobby pianism wasn’t the prerogative of hell, but heaven, it might sound like this.

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