We heard Vancouver's excellent Turning Point Ensemble in a concert the other day of music from 1920's Europe. There were two highlights from the concert. The first, the Suite from Kurt Weill's "Threepenny Opera", was familiar, but an absolute joy to hear performed live with such skill and precision. All Weill's seductive melodies were heard in their very distinctive orchestrations, and the clarity with which Weill makes his subtle disjunct permutations of these tunes is wonderful. The other highlight was an unfamiliar piece, a concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra by Erwin Schuloff. The idea of the piece, to begin with, is quirky; such ensemble would normally be considered quite impossible to balance. But Schuloff makes it work, and the results are always musically intriguing. One of the movements ends in a chord for string harmonics with contrabassoon, for example. Equally unfamiliar to me was the early Hindemith Kammermusik No. 1, which was bristling with energy and musical invention.
The concert was marketed under the rubric of forbidden music, i.e. that which the Nazis suppressed. The case of Schuloff, who died in a concentration camp, is indeed a case where the Nazi suppression succeeded; contemporary music has a hard enough time being heard without any suppression and I think if Schuloff had managed to emigrate and survive, his reputation as a great composer of the 20th century would have ensued.
It was a great concert; a perfect example of innovative and interesting programming.
