I'm on record in these precincts as saying I don't find anything much in
Martinu that I can like.

But today I've changed my mind.  For quite a while I've owned the
recordings of the complete symphonies done by the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson, and I thought I'd listened to them
all, but maybe I hadn't.  At any rate, this afternoon I put on the Fourth
Symphony and fell in love with it.  I'm now listening for the third time
(it's about thirty minutes long).  It's got those trademark blurry
harmonies (with muted horn harmonies in the background, slightly akilter
and acting like a scrim through which the activity of the music must make
itself heard) and those push-pull accordion-like Petrushka chords.  What
I'm responding to, though, is the sheer elan of the music, the joy of it
all.  I finally went to the program notes and discover that this was
Martinu's reaction to the end of World War II.  Makes sense.  This is
happy music, bumptious and serene by turns.  The largo - the third movement
- is lyrical, radiant, and not like anything I've ever heard by Martinu.

Maybe I'd better go back and listen more carefully to more of his music.

Scott M.