Bohuslav Martinu

* Spalicek
* Dandelion Romance*
* Primrose^

Kratochvilova (soprano), Kopp (tenor), Novak (bass)
Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra
Cejkova (soprano)*
Messiereur (violin),^ Bogunia (piano),^ Kuehn Female Chorus^
all conducted by Frantisek Jilek
Supraphon 110752-2 Total time: 61:25 + 58:12

Summary for the Busy Executive: Joyful play.

The CD presents two little cantatas and a full ballet.  A love of Czech
folk tales and folk poetry unites them.  After 1938, Martinu never saw
his home again.  In fact, it turns out that he spent more of his life
outside Czechoslovakia than in it.  He left for Paris in 1922 as the
recipient of a six-month government stipend and stayed until the Nazis
invaded France.  Paris represented an alternative to what Martinu felt
as Prague parochialism.  Yet Paris also failed to satisfy him.  After
indulging in rather fashionable works himself, he found much of the
artistic cosmopolitanism empty, although he admired Stravinsky, and
throughout his life he suffered from fits of homesickness.  Martinu
usually signaled this mood in works that used Czech folk material as
their foundation.

Folk music for Martinu was never a simple matter of quotation.  Like
his compatriots Dvorak and Janacek and like Vaughan Williams as well,
he assimilated its essence, and it had the same effect on him as on the
others of opening up his musical language.  This took a number of years,
and the road to his artistic self was not always straight and ever-forward.
Nevertheless, we see the general progress in the three works recorded here.
The "folk" works of Martinu speed up his maturity, often anticipating the
idiom of his last period by decades.

Spalicek from 1932-33 is the earliest, most elaborate, and least-assured
work here.  One could very easily describe it as a ballet-revue, since
it consists of several unrelated stories.  To some extent, it reflects
Martinu's dislike of realism; the lack of continuity between acts and even
scenes counteracts any Tchaikovskian narrative impulse.  The stories serve
almost as pictures, as if one were to happen upon and browse a book of
folk tales found in a second-hand bin.  It requires solo voices (perhaps
influenced by Stravinsky's Pulcinella) and a treble chorus.  The work has
previously been recorded as an instrumental suite (notably by Charles
Mackerras on Conifer CDCF202, now deleted), but unfortunately that hides
the true nature of the work.  The voices emphasize the folk-song element,
and we hear it as the spring of just about everything else in the ballet.
Martinu revised the work in 1937 and in 1940, dropping the last act - The
Spectre's Bride, now a separate piece available on Supraphon 111090-2 - and
rearranging several parts.  The uncertainty of the work stems not merely
from its rearrangement, but from the hesitancies of the purely instrumental
movements.  If one compares Spalicek with the similarly folk-influenced
Bouquet of Flowers, written only four years later, one sees in the latter
work how much more thoroughly Martinu has integrated the folk element into
his personal idiom, as well as a consistently higher level of invention.
Nevertheless, one can see the fully mature Martinu peeking out here and
there, especially in the second act, in such numbers as "The Magic Bag"
and "At the Gate of Hell." In the companion piece, "At the Gate of Heaven,"
we get a bit of time-travel - quietly rapturous music that foreshadows the
Symphony No.  6 of the Fifties.  I don't really criticize the ballet.  On
its own terms, it's a beauty, especially the magnificent last act (which
combines the stories of St.  Dorothea and Cinderella), possibly because of
the greater participation of the voices.  But it isn't quite what Martinu
became.

Primrose and Dandelion Romance come from Martinu's final period in the
Fifties.  Primrose is the simpler of the two works, a series of duets on
Moravian folk texts for treble choir, violin, and piano.  Treble voices
brought out the best in Martinu's choral writing, for some reason,
inspiring him to flights of vigorous counterpoint.  This is a gem which,
because of the language it's written in, will probably never be performed
outside of the Czech Republic.

Dandelion Romance is the last of four cantatas on words by the poet
Miroslav Bures.  You can find the other three on Supraphon 110767-2 231.
I have no idea why Supraphon decided to break them up.  At any rate, the
Romance is an unusual work, as it's a cappella for mixed voices.  It opens
with the most rapt C-major chord you've ever heard and tells of a young
girl waiting for her lover, gone seven years.  The text ends ambivalently.
We don't know whether the lover is dead in the wars or married to someone
else.  The music ends in a bright shimmer, like the jeweled wing of an
insect, as the choir celebrates the true heart of the girl.

Wonderful performances of wonderful music.

Steve Schwartz