★★★★★
Around the time Arnold Schoenberg got fed up with atonality and moved to serialism, a Czech composer of no renown decided that the future lay in microtones, A soldier in the Austrian army in the first world war, Alois Haba tried his luck with three fugues for two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart. Hardly anyone could hear the difference from “normal” music and the world continued to revolve on its axis.
Haba joined the Communist party, palled up with Hanns Eisler and was encouraged to compose in one-sixth of a tone by the ever-curious Ferruccio Busoni. Haba composed string quartets, redesigned pianos to play in fractured tones and put on a quarter-tone opera, Matka, that no diva could sing with any degree of accuracy. Banned by the Nazis, he was dismayed to find that the post-war Communists had no sympathy for his experiments; Haba died in 1973, almost entirely forgotten.
Which makes the release of his piano music by Miroslav Beinhauer something of a revelation and, unexpectedly, massively good fun. The first of two CDs is filled with music written in his twenties, between 1914 and 1919, including two piano sonatas of more promise than fulfillment. Nothing here to frighten the horses.
It’s 1920 where the fun begins. Behind Haba’s cerebral exterior lurks mischief. The fourth of six pieces for piano is a setting of the nursery rhyme “1-2-3-4-5, once I caught a fish alive”. Two waltzes of 1921 are, if possible, bleaker than Ravel’s.
Dances for piano add a splash of blues and tango. Think Kurt Weill meets Astor Piazzolla. These pieces, brutally difficult to play, enter the ear with surprising ease. Tap your foot to off-tone dances and you’ll be whisked into another sound world. None of these pianos has been retuned, we are assured. Miroslav Beinhauer, new to me, is quite some pianist. Really needs to be heard.
