Welcome to the Hugo Kauder Society

01/15/2008

Another warm review for Kauder CD

The Euclid Quartet’s Hugo Kauder: String Quartets 1-4 received another enthusiastic review. The CD, released in fall 2007, was already named Recording of the Month in this review by MusicWeb International.

American Record Guide’s Elaine Fine has apparently also become a fan of Kauder, even writing about his Fugavergnügen (her coinage) on her personal music blog. She writes in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of ARG:

This is the first time I have heard any of the 17 string quartets by the Czech composer Hugo Kauder (1888-1972), who spent his professional life as a violist and composer in Vienna and then lived in New York from 1940 on.
The first quartet, written in 1921, sounds heavily influenced by the music of Richard Strauss. Once the Strauss influence fades (after 1) and the modal writing and the counterpoint (or as his friends called it “Kauderpoint”) begins, his string quartet music becomes a cornupcopia of fantastic fugal writing, folk songs and dances, and gorgeous modal melodies. The writing is rich, with generous melodic material given to the inner voices, particularly to the viola; and he is extremely creative and inventive while always using a tonal musical vocabulary.
There is a Renaissance clarity and quality to his counterpoint, and a glance at the scores of some of his string quartet scores reveals that in Renaissance fashion he chose to write without measure lines, giving only a slash to indicate where the downbeat would fall.
Hearing Kauder’s superb music adds a completely new dimension to my perception of the kind of music that was being written in Vienna in the 1920s. I imagine that Kauder’s Viennese dodecaphonic contemporaries envied his Bachian ability to write counterpoint that is both brilliant and beautiful.
Much of Kauder’s music has been published, but very little of it has been recorded (this is the only professional recording I know of). A few years ago I heard a performance of a choral piece by Kauder that made a profound impression on me, and I wondered then why I had never heard of him. Maybe, now that tonality is appreciated once again, it is time for a recording “Renaissance” of Kauder’s music. There are more than 300 works, both vocal and instrumental, to choose from; and these four quartets, played beautifully by this very fine quartet, are an excellent start.