Relayed from the Grotrian Hall, London
Czecko-Slovakia
The Zika String Quartet: Richard Zika, Herbert Berger, Ladislaw Czerny, Ladislaw Zika
Erwin Schulhoff (Solo Pianoforte)
The Second Part of the Concert
Erwin Schulhoff - Five Jazz Concert Studies (1926)...Schulhoff
Charleston; Blues; Song; Tango; Toccata on the Shimmy - The Kitten on the Keys
Erwin Schulhoff, Pianist and Composer, was born in Prague thirty-three years ago. His academic career at the Conservatoires of Prague, Leipzig and Cologne, and at the Berlin High School for Music, was a distinguished one. He has since made known a great deal of modern music, with which he is keenly in sympathy. His own style in composition has been described by one of his fellow-countrymen as between those of Schonberg and Stravinsky.
Quartet - Quartet in D Minor, Op.34...Dvorak
In almost everything Dvorak wrote we find the national element peeping out. The
Composer was brought up among peasant folk, and learned to love the songs and dance that he heard in the alehouse or on the village green.
His fist String Quartet (in D Minor, known as 'Opus 34') contains several traces of these happy influences. It is in four Movements.
The First Movement is a cheery, care-free affair, with a touch of Southern grace in it.
The Second Movement is a Polka, a native Bohemian dance that about a hundred years ago began to be popular in almost all European ballrooms. In Dvorak's example we get the essence of the dance's spirit, with an added lightness and daintiness now and again, and occasionally, as a contrast, an almost furious battering of the rhythm. To the first part of this Movement a quieter 'Trio' succeeds, in different time (three beats in the bar in place of two) and then the Polka returns.
The Third Movement is played with mutes, and some rich effects are obtained by the instruments playing, at times, chords of two notes each, so that at certain moments there are eight parts going.
The Last Movement skips along in dance fashion, with occasional changes of mood, when a more flowing, undulating style is used. At such times the 'Cello frequently keeps up the little 'postman's knock' rhythm of three notes that was observable at the start.
