Otto Schulhof

OTTO SCHULHOF is a native of that city of musical history, Vienna. He has toured Europe with Kreisler, Huberman and Kubelik and for many years played with the great master of the cello, Pablo Casals. (...)

Viennese pianist and composer Otto Schulhof (1889-1958) was a professor at the Wiener Musikakademie. He was the pianist on various recordings and on concert tours with Pablo Casals, as well as with many other singers and cellists. He often performed his own transcriptions and paraphrases on Strauss themes, making a few recordings into the LP era. In 1945 Paul Badura-Skoda (b.1927) entered the Vienna Conservatory, and two years later won first prize in the Austrian Music Competition and a scholarship which allowed him to study with Edwin Fischer. In 1949, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan became aware of Badura-Skoda, and invited him to play concerts. Practically overnight the young Viennese became a world-famous artist. Paul Badura- Skoda has recorded a vast repertoire – more than 200 LPs and dozens of compact discs including the complete cycles of the piano sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Among numerous encores, the delightful Schulhof transcription of Strauss’s Pizzicato- Polka, Op. 449, has been a favourite of Badura-Skoda’s since he first recorded it 55 years ago.