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MARTINU
THE COMPLETE MUSIC FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA
BOHUSLAV MATOUŠEK
CZECH PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD
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N 29 JANUARY 1941 the Swiss conductor Paul
Sacher wrote to Bohuslav Martinu in Lisbon: ‘I
am preparing the general programme for the
1941–2 season. I need a modern piece for violin and
orchestra and would like to ask you if you would be willing
to write a concerto of this kind. I am looking for a com-
position of some fifteen to twenty minutes that would
be suitable for my leader Madame Gertrud Flügel. She is
a violinist of tremendous technique, a very musical artist,
who specializes in vigorous movements bursting with
strength and momentum rather than in the elegant and
witty genre. Nevertheless, her soft playing has an intimate
charm. I don’t know if you remember her? The accom-
panying orchestra should be limited to just strings with a
percussion and piano according to your choice.’
The commission for the
Concerto da camera
H285
for violin, piano, timpani, percussion and string orchestra
arrived at a turning point in Martinu’s life. Since July 1940
he had been engaged in a highly dramatic escape from
France, where he had lived for seventeen years and
achieved a remarkable reputation, but which was now
occupied by the German army. His emigration to the USA
marked a radical change in Martinu’s lifestyle. On 6 April
1941, he referred to this in his letter to Sacher: ‘I arrived
here [in New York] in a lamentable condition, […] but I
have to work a lot since I don’t have enough of my music
with me, and everybody asks me for scores which
unfortunately remain in Europe, so I have to compose new
pieces.’ But it proved to be more difficult than the
composer expected. In his next letter to Paul Sacher (14
June 1941) he admits that even if he had ‘the firm
intention to write the [proposed] concerto for violin’ he
had not ‘taken into account the great change nor the
reaction to all those recent events. I started to work but the
result is not at all good; I have to admit that the new life
here absorbs me too much, giving me no time to look after
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myself, and I am banking now on the summer to bring
order to my mind.’
Indeed he didn’t start working again on the concerto
before the middle of July while spending the summer in
a small country house in Edgartown, Massachusetts. Here
Martinu rediscovered the ‘order’ necessary for creative
work, and even recovered his fine sense of humour, as
seen in a letter to his friend Rudolf Firkušn�½ (12 July
1941): ‘There is quite an acceptable piano here which
works in accordance with the weather—whenever it is
nice weather, it works, but during that time I am on the
beach. When it is rainy and wet, it does not work at all.’
This was of course an exaggeration typical of the composer,
as become clear from his letter to Sacher written just ten
days later: ‘I finished the first movement and am close to
finishing the second as well; everything should be ready
within fifteen days […] I believe you will be pleased with
the piece.’
After Martinu completed the concerto, which he dedi-
cated ‘to Paul Sacher and his Basel Chamber Orchestra’,
he made another copy for safety reasons and through the
Swiss ambassador in the USA he sent it on 20 August to
Basel. As early as 9 September Sacher telegrammed back:
‘Score arrived, am enthusiastic about the piece.’
In the
Concerto da camera
Martinu returned once
more to his favourite concerto grosso form, which allowed
him to avoid the thematic dualism of sonata form and
to concentrate on the constant evolution of small musical
cells. The first movement,
Moderato, poco allegro,
is in
variation form, with spicy harmonies that are quite often
polytonal. The orchestral writing is transparent and clear
with only spare use of the timpani. The second movement,
Adagio,
is reminiscent of a baroque aria, characterized
by the highly dense polyphonic writing for the string
orchestra. It anticipates Martinu’s development towards
emotional warmth and a Dvorák-like
cantabile
quality.
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The piano part, with its long rhythmical values, constitutes
a sort of cantus firmus under the rich figurative work
of the orchestra and the solo violin. The third movement,
Poco allegro,
is a rondo with a melodically and rhythmi-
cally distinct motif related to that of the first movement.
The orchestra is given added colour by cymbals and a
triangle. Martinu again combines elements of concerto
grosso with lyrical cantilena close to the expressive world
of Dvorák.
The premiere of
Concerto da camera
took place on 23
January 1942 in Basel with Gertrud Flügel and the Basel
Chamber Orchestra under Paul Sacher. Three days later
Sacher telegrammed to Martinu: ‘Violin concerto accepted
with enthusiasm we all thank you.’ Because of the fresh-
ness of its musical invention, the sensual sound of the
orchestral part and the virtuosity of the solo parts, the
Concerto da camera
is a favourite among Martinu’s
instrumental concertos; it provides delight to both
performers and listeners.
It was unknown until recently that Martinu later slightly
simplified the solo violin part, probably as a result of
suggestions from the American violinist Louis Kaufman,
who describes it in his memoirs
A Fiddler’s Tale.
This
version of the concerto was published by Universal Edition
in Vienna, and is recorded here. The planned complete
critical edition of the works of Bohuslav Martinu will
include both versions of the work.
During the 1940s, Martinu composed at least one new
work for the violin every year: the
Concerto da camera
of
1941 was followed in 1942 by the
Madrigal Sonata
for
flute, violin and piano, and a year later by the Violin
Concerto No 2. The
Czech Rhapsody
H307A was written
at Cape Cod, South Orleans, Massachusetts, from 5 to 19
July 1945. In a letter from 10 July Martinu remarks to
Miloš Šafránek: ‘… it is a form I thought I would no longer
write in, and I am finding it rather difficult.’ This virtuosic
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composition, originally for violin and piano, was commis-
sioned by the celebrated violinist Fritz Kreisler and is
dedicated to him. As far as we know Kreisler never
performed the piece. In fact it is difficult to imagine
Kreisler, who by that time had reached the age of seventy,
reckoning with the exceptionally difficult technical
demands of this piece, which include double stops at
the interval of a tenth as well as rapid runs and large
intervallic leaps. The central key of the
Czech Rhapsody
is
B flat major, which appears in Martinu’s later works as
a symbol of hope and happiness, which would fit into the
atmosphere of the end of World War 2. It should be noted
that another composition by Martinu also bears the title
Czech Rhapsody:
a cantata for baritone, chorus, orchestra
and organ dating from 1918, also composed in the throes
of a world war, dedicated to the Czech writer Alois Jirásek.
Martinu had originally intended to write this work for
violin with orchestral accompaniment. He wrote to his
friend Frank Rybka (on 24 June 1945): ‘For Kreisler I’ve
written a
Czech Rhapsody,
for the time being with piano.’
To a certain extent, then, the existing piano part was really
conceived as a piano reduction, which Martinu then
intended to orchestrate. With this in mind, the Martinu
Foundation commissioned the composer Jirí Teml to
orchestrate the work, which he did with the help of the
violinist Ivan Štraus. Teml’s point of reference for the
orchestration was the stylistically similar Rhapsody-
concerto for viola and orchestra, H337, composed in the
spring of 1952. The details of the premier of the original
version for violin and piano have not yet been tracked
down; the orchestral version on this disc was heard for the
first time at the Martinu Festival in Prague in December
2001.
Although written for the same set of solo instruments
as the
Concerto da camera,
the
Concerto for violin,
piano and orchestra
H342 represents a completely
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different approach towards this medium. It was composed
in New York from 1 December 1952 to 10 March 1953,
four years after the communist takeover in Czecho-
slovakia, which prevented Martinu returning to his native
country. This enigmatic and highly personal work,
structurally driven by its emotional nature, probably
echoes the crisis in the composer’s personal life, caused
by the sudden breakdown in the summer of 1952 of his
long-term relationship with Rosalyn Barstow. We can,
however, follow the progression of the work through the
correspondence of the composer with Olga Schneeberger,
an Italian friend. On 21 October 1952 he mentions to her
‘a well-paid commission for a concerto for violin, piano
and orchestra’. According to his letter of 8 December (his
birthday) he had finally started to compose the concerto:
‘After a week of contemplation on the subject I now feel
in the right condition to do it.’ On 17 January 1953 he
remarks that ‘the concerto develops well; I have already
received the first bank check for it’. After a break caused
by the preparatory work for the television premiere of
his new opera
The Marriage
on the NBC, he writes on
9 February: ‘I have to return to this concerto, which I
have neglected for a while.’ A month later the piece was
finished.
Compared to the rather neo-Impressionistic works
from this period—the most prominent one being the
complex and dense
Phantaisies symphoniques
(Sym-
phony No 6, H343)—the Concerto for violin, piano and
orchestra appears to be surprisingly tonal and traditional.
Its first movement,
Poco allegro,
combines neo-baroque
techniques with elements of jazz. The toccata-like opening
in D minor evokes the famous Double concerto for two
string orchestras from 1938, and introduces a feverish
ostinato around the basic note D. This is followed by a
surprisingly Dvorák-like melody in the strings. The first
entrance of the solo piano adopts the toccata of the
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orchestral introduction, but in E flat minor. The solo violin
steps in, taking up the string melody of the introduction,
now in E flat major. Throughout the middle section
Martinu works with these two motifs. After the recapitu-
lation a coda in E major closes the movement.
The second movement,
Adagio,
opens in a sort of E
minor. Though very tonal again, here the proximity to his
more typical music of that time such as
The Greek Passion
can be felt, distinguished by sudden changes of mood as
well as of the density of orchestral texture. It feels like
a strange meditation, anticipating with its simplicity
Martinu’s elementary folk cantata
Opening of the Springs
from 1955.
The solo violin enters with a variant of its theme from
the first movement. The piano joins in with figurative
passagework in C major, at first providing an accompani-
mental backdrop for an orchestral oboe solo and only
gradually developing into a genuine solo part. A richly
figurative cadenza for the two solo instruments is followed
by a vibrant orchestral melody that reminds us of the
composer’s Czech origins. Here, for the first time, the
typical
Juliette
chord progression appears, a sort of plagal
cadence best known from his opera
Juliette
which also
appears in several other works, especially from the 1950s.
The movement closes in an emphatic C major.
The opening orchestral section of the
Allegro
reflects
the world of Martinu’s Symphony No 4, written at the end
of World War 2. The piano enters in C major with an
optimistic variant of the toccata-like figuration of the first
movement. Just two bars later it is joined by the solo violin.
The second theme sounds like a highly unusual fusion of
the expressive worlds of Dvorák’s violin concerto and late
nineteenth-century Italian opera. Short melodic cells,
however, refer to the neo-baroque period of Martinu. What
seems at first to be a literal reprise is suddenly stopped
after just thirteen bars by a highly operatic procedure: a
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long pause followed by an unusually dramatic, even tragic,
entrance of the piano. It is easy to see at this point a sort
of Faustian dilemma (‘Two souls live in my chest’), but we
cannot know whether this was what Martinu had in mind.
The dark vision is lightened slightly by the entrance of two
clarinets and by a gradual tonal stabilization. Step by step
the orchestra comes in. The coda is in Martinu’s favourite
key of B flat major; it presents stretto fanfares from the
oboes and trumpets and modulates to E minor. A chorale
melody finally leads to the culmination in C major.
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The premiere of the Concerto for violin, piano and
orchestra took place on 13 November 1954 in San Antonio,
performed by the concerto’s dedicatees, Benno and Sylvia
Rabinof (violin and piano respectively), with the San
Antonio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Victor Ales-
sandro. Its success led to several further performances,
and on 27 March 1957 the Rabinofs wrote to the
composer: ‘Your concerto becomes nobler and better-
loved every time we play it.’
ALEŠ BREZINA © 2008
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Also available on Hyperion
MARTINU
The complete music for violin and orchestra – 1
Concerto for flute, violin and orchestra, H252
Duo concertante for two violins and orchestra, H264
Concerto in D major for two violins and orchestra, H329
BOHUSLAV MATOUŠEK violin
with JANNE THOMSEN flute, RÉGIS PASQUIER violin
and JENNIFER KOH violin
CZECH PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA /
CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD conductor
Compact Disc CDA67671
‘Attractive but unfamiliar pieces which few but the
most seasoned Martinu fans will already know, in
performances that are not only enjoyable in themselves but which whet the appetite for their
successors … Christopher Hogwood keeps the music unfolding naturally throughout … Everything
here shows Martinu’s typically festive imagination in full flight’ (International
Record Review)
‘This disc is an utter delight from start to finish’ (Gramophone)
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With thanks to Mr Ruedi and Mrs Ivana Rentsch for their generous support of this recording
For more information on Martinu please visit
www.martinu.cz;
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if you are interested in joining the Martinu circle please email
incircle@martinu.cz
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