Recorded in Prague in June 2006, this outstanding disc contains music of diverse genres from the pen of Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), whose eclectic style combines Slavic elements with a Parisian pedagogy, especially the post-romantic ethos of composers like Debussy, Honegger, and Roussel, cross-fertilized by the ethno-musicological progress of Dvorak, Janacek, Kodaly, and Bartok. The G Minor Concerto (1943) began as a commission from Mischa Elman (1891-1967), who premiered the work with Koussevitzky in Boston ( a recording from 1/1/44 exists). Each of the three movements falls into a ternary pattern, a syncopated and sinuous motif guiding the first movement. Shimmering harmonies with tympani accompaniment allude to Bartok and Prokofiev’s concerto in the same key. Isabelle Faust, who performs on a lovely Stradivarius, displays an immediate affinity for Martinu’s angular eroticism, and Belohlovek delivers an equally expressive orchestral swaddling cloth for Faust’s luxuriant plaints. Near the end of the first movement, after a few explosive tuttis, the tempo becomes Andante and offers a meditative cadenza on the principal riffs. Martinu wanted the second movement “almost bucolic,” so the movement is suffused in glowing, romantic colors, serene and virtuosic in the middle section. The last movement combines bravura solo writing with concertante textures. Faust has her hands full of wide stretches and leaps, the effects piling up into a forceful stretto of stunning effect.
The short Serenade No. 2 (1932) is among Martinu’s Parisian pieces, and it likely owes debts to Roussel’s Sinfonietta, Op. 52. The style is a mixed bag of Mozart, Czech folk music and hymnody, and an open-air texture that just might invoke Aaron Copland. The rhythms become asymmetrical (or what Martinu would call “geometrical”) and dissonances move the music freely. The middle movement harkens to old, modal sonorities with a drone bass.
The Toccata and Two Songs for Strings, Winds, and Piano Obbligato (1946) is an energetic product of a commission from Paul Sacher (1906-1999) and his Basel ensemble, a light and joyous piece rife with Stravinsky and colorist elements we find in Frank Martin, each of whom enjoyed the Sacher patronage as well. A cross of neo-classic and neo-baroque styles, the music communicates a crisp buoyancy of spirit – certainly little of WW II gloom lingers about it. Sometimes the piano struts forth as a solo, but more often it adds repeated figures and polyphonic color lines. The B-flat Minor second movement runs slow-fast and reaches upward in the strings over pearly strands from the keyboard, quite expressive. The last movement might have been ripped from a piece of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. A curious hymnal in D Major, the tension increases and resolute ardor takes over. The natural fervor Belohlovek brings to all this quite raises the musical roof, a strong addition to the Martinu legacy.
— Gary Lemco
