Martinu: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

Giorgio Koukl

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Cat No: 8557914

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Release Date: 30 September 2006

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313291427

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: MARTINU

Description
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) Complete Piano Music • 1 Bohuslav Martinů was born in a church tower in Polička, a Bohemian village about eighty kilometres north of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. A precocious child, Martinů began to compose at the age of ten, after beginning his study of the violin two years earlier. Although he attended the Prague Conservatory, he failed to complete his courses. While a young man, he worked as an orchestral violinist in Prague before moving to Paris in 1923 in order to study with Albert Roussel.Martinů was a prolific composer. He wrote over four hundred pieces of music, some eighty of which were for the piano. Even though they constitute such a large portion of his work, the reputation of his works for solo piano has been overshadowed by that of his orchestral and chamber music.The pieces included here were all written between 1920 and 1938. Except for the Foxtrot of 1920, written in Polička, all were composed during Martinů's Parisian era, before he emigrated to America in 1940. In these one can hear a variety of expression as he developed into his mature personal style.There are two short works from 1920 by Martinů entitled Foxtrot, H. 126 and H. 123. The one recorded here, H. 126, is a delightful short gem which is clearly inspired by the best of American rags and two-steps. This youthful work uses direct diatonic harmonies, but with its few simple twists of harmonic direction still sounds wonderfully fresh today.The five Fables are among the early works written after Martinů's arrival in Paris in 1923. The titles of each movement do not represent actual fables in the sense of stories but, after the folk-like opening A la ferme (On the Farm) are abstractions of different animals that might typically appear in such a story, a rabbit, monkeys, a chicken, and an angry bear.Although they were both written in 1927, Le Noël (Christmas) and the Trois esquisses (Three Sketches) are remarkably different. Le Noël is charmingly attractive in a recognizably French manner, while the Trois esquisses are highly abstracted snapshots of popular dance idioms of the Americas, blues, tango, and Charleston.Martinů's Eight Preludes for Piano were written in 1929 as two sets of four preludes but were published the following year by Alphonse Leduc as a single set of eight. The publisher also appears to have created the "En forme…" titles, as Martinů's scores were marked only with the tempi, with which two of the appended titles, the third and sixth, are somewhat at odds. All eight are dedicated "à Mademoiselle Charlotte Quennehen", who became Martinů's wife two years later. These preludes show both the influence of American jazz-related idioms, as seen from a European perspective, and an enriched diatonic harmonic language.Although Martinů was clearly influenced by American idioms during hi
Tracklisting