Bohuslav Martinu
Male, Female, and Mixed Choruses

* Brigand Songs I, II* (1957)
* Czech Nursery Rhymes (1931)
* Three Part-Songs (1952)
* Czech Madrigals (1939)
* Four Songs of the Virgin (1934)
* Five Czech Madrigals (1948)
* Madrigals (1959)
* Three Sacred Songs (1952)**

Petr Messiereur (violin)**,
Prague Radio Choir*, Kuehn Mixed Choir/Pavel Kuehn
Supraphon SU3101-2232 Total time: 42:04 + 50:51

Summary for the Busy Executive: Light made audible.

More from Supraphon's continuing exploration of Martinu's huge output.
I remember Supraphon and Panton as just about the only two labels that
paid any attention at all to Martinu.  Now, of course, the composer
appears on even major labels with some regularity, and there have been
several integral recordings of the symphonies.  Yet, somehow I doubt
that this boomlet would have happened without Supraphon.  I suppose there
are advantages to at least some state-run cultural programs.  Martinu
ranks undoubtedly as one of my favorite composers.  Above all, the music
invigorates me:  it makes me feel good.  He's one of the few classical
composers who not only can set my feet a-tapping, but can rapture me out.

According to his main biographer, Milos Safranek, Martinu felt he had to
solve for himself the problem of modal harmony.  He liked harmonies that
seem to rise from the intersection of separate melodies - as in folk music
- but Bach and even Monteverdi were far too complex for the effect he had
in mind.  Before World War I, Martinu had an epiphany:  a Prague concert
of the English Singers, a pioneering madrigal-revival group, ancestors of
Nadia Boulanger's groups, the Deller Consort, down to the King's Singers
and Quink.  The Tudor madrigalists seemed to confirm all of his notions
and led to his creation of a highly individual counterpoint.  Too poor,
however, to afford collections of madrigals, Martinu for a very long
time knew this music only from performance.  Consequently, his notion of
madrigal and the real thing may have diverged after the passage of years.
Nevertheless, I believe that the Tudor madrigals also influenced, or
at least found an echo in, his notions of rhythm - particularly in
syncopations across bar lines generated from the juxtaposition of
different lines.

In Martinu's mind, the madrigal was mainly a chamber contrapuntal form,
best suited to small homogeneous forces and not necessarily limited to
voices.  Consequently, you have Martinu compositions labeled "madrigals"
for all sorts of groups:  voices, two violins, violin and piano, and so on.
Not all of the works on this CD are so titled, but in general the madrigal
touches almost all of Martinu's a cappella output.

Although one notes the exceptions of such large-scale pieces as The Epic
of Gilgamesh and The Prophecy of Isaiah, Czech folklore also runs through
Martinu's choral works, particularly in the choice of texts, which come
mainly from one collection of folk poetry.  Unlike, say, Poulenc and
Kodaly, Martinu rarely used the choral medium to explore the writings of
living poets.  That's certainly true of the program here.  The works come
from the Thirties on, and - as we might have predicted from Martinu's
compositional fecundity - there are a lot of them.

Again, much of Martinu's choral work explores the homogeneous ensemble,
even radically simplified to all men and all women.  The work for males,
like the Brigand Songs uncharacteristically homophonic, works with the
richness of the sound.  The work for female voices outnumbers the male
choruses by a lot, and here Martinu creates his characteristic
syncopations.  It's as if the relative lightness and radiance of the
voices frees up his rhythm, especially in the Czech Nursery Rhymes and
Three Sacred Songs, the latter of which adds a solo violin, thus increasing
the contrapuntal complexity.

Largely, I believe, due to the folkloric element, the choral music
foreshadows developments in Martinu's work that appear full-blown years
(in some cases, decades) later.  For example, the Czech Rhapsody of 1918
points to Martinu's work in the Forties.  It's also this "early edition"
aspect of the work that allows Martinu to slip a movement from his 1931
Nursery Rhymes into the 1952 Three Part-Songs without a jar.  Martinu
clearly shares an approach toward choral music and choral declamation
with Kodaly, especially in the Brigand Songs (1957), although you'd never
mistake one for the other.  The Brigand Songs exhibit the same dark,
astringent palate as other late works, like The Greek Passion and The
Prophecy of Isaiah.  More often than not, however, the choral language sets
an equivalent to the orchestral works, particularly the ecstatic dances of
the Forties.  If you like the middle-period symphonies and concerti, you'll
probably enjoy these works.  My favorite is the mixed-choir Four Songs of
the Virgin, a work of great depth in which the life of Mary unfolds not in
the sophisticated verse of Rilke, but in the direct poetry of the Czech
folk.

Pavel Kuehn along with his compatriots Miroslav Venhoda and Libor Pesek
have all made names for themselves in this repertoire.  The Czech choruses
distinguish themselves by their lightness and flexibility.  The sound isn't
particularly large or, in my opinion, gorgeous, as even a small group like
the Tallis Scholars achieves.  On the other hand, they invest their singing
with great understanding of the texts, and the sharpness of their diction
could slice through cheesecloth.  I complain only about the lack of
translations for the texts and a few proofreading errors in the notes
(Martinu died in 1959, not 1952).  Other than that, a delight.

Finally, I've found a really good source for recordings of Czech music:
Musica Bona (http://www.musicabona.cz/) in the Czech Republic.  The prices
are low and the service excellent.

Steve Schwartz