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CHAN 9655 Front.qxd 25/7/07 11:16 am Page 1 CHAN 9655 CHANDOS Martinu˚ P IANO W ORKS ELEONORA BEKOVA ELEONORA BEKOVA CHAN 9655 BOOK II.qxd 25/7/07 11:18 am Page 2 Bohuslav Martinuº (1890–1959) Fantaisie et toccata, H. 281 15:11 1 1 Fantaisie: Andante – Moderato – Poco vivo – Allegro – Andante – 7:54 2 2 Toccata: Allegro 7:17 Eight Preludes, H. 181 20:04 3 1 En forme de Blues: Poco andante 3:29 Hulton Getty 4 2 En forme de Scherzo: Vivo 1:29 5 3 En forme d’Andante: Adagio 3:57 6 4 En forme de Danse: Allegro vivo 2:32 7 5 En forme de Capriccio: Allegretto 1:31 8 6 En forme de Largo: Lento 3:51 9 7 En forme d’Etude: Presto 1:15 10 8 En forme de Fox-Trot: Allegro 1:35 Piano Sonata, H. 350 18:23 11 I Poco allegro 5:11 12 II Moderato (Poco andante) 8:05 Bohuslav Martinu˚ 13 III Adagio – Poco allegro 4:59 3 CHAN 9655 BOOK II.qxd 25/7/07 11:18 am Page 4 14 Dumka No. 3, H. 285bis 2:12 Moderato Bohuslav Martinu˚: Piano Works 15 The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, H. 318 2:48 Fantaisie et toccata H. 282 and Sonata da Camera, H. 283. The Moderato (Andante) Although Martinuº had already written some Fantaisie was written in the August and the seventy works for piano, including several of Toccata in September. Although Firkuˇsny ´ was º 16 Bagatelle (Morceau facile), H. 323 0:53 multiple short pieces, the Fantaisie et toccata to play it privately to Martinu, it was not until Moderato was his first work of real significance for the 2 February 1943 in New York that he was solo instrument. The circumstances of its able to give its official first performance. TT 60:10 composition were significant in Martinu’sº life. Writing about the work towards the end of Having settled in Paris in 1923 and his life, Firkuˇsny ´ said: Eleonora Bekova piano subsequently married there, like many in that The greatest gift he gave me was his Fantaisie et city he and his wife did not take seriously the Toccata, written when we were in southern France threat of impending German invasion in 1940. in 1940, both waiting for our departure for the It was his lifelong friend, the pianist Rudolf United States. This particular work expresses the Firkuˇsny, ´ who was also a member of the anguish of the situation – Europe was in chaos Czech artistic colony in that city, who alerted and a return to our native country became an the Martinusº to the reality of the situation and unattainable dream. persuaded them to leave Paris for the south of In that sense, this work shares something of France, a course of action that he also was to the emotions Martinuº poured into his Double take. In due course both the Martinusº and Concerto H. 271 of 1938, as he felt the dark Firkuˇsny ´ made their escape to the United clouds of war gathering over Europe and he States via Lisbon in 1941. left his beloved homeland for what was to be In 1940, while on their journey southward the last time. in France to Marseilles, Martinuº wrote the While we associate Martinuº with writing his Fantaisie et toccata (originally called ‘Fantaisie main ‘fantasy works’ in the 1950s, musical et rondo’, according to Miloˇs Sˇafránek, his freedom and rhythmic flexibility can be found friend and first biographer) specially for in many earlier compositions. The origins of Firkuˇsny ´ while stopping in Aix-en-Provence. It this stem partly from his roots in the folk was the first of the works he was to write in music of Bohemia and Moravia and partly Aix, others being the Sinfonietta giocosa, from the dance music and jazz syncopations of 4 5 CHAN 9655 BOOK II.qxd 25/7/07 11:18 am Page 6 the heady Parisian 1920s. On the written page Loutky (Puppets) written between 1912 and Piano Sonata In the Piano Sonata we find this free form this manifested itself in shifting time 1924 and indeed some of his later piano By the time Martinuº wrote this work he was a of fantasy but the whole work remains signatures and often an absence of restricting pieces of the 1930s. Although Martinuº well-established composer in America and had completely balanced. The outcome is a work bar lines. The partial absence of bar lines is a conceived them in two parts of four preludes made friends with a number of internationally of great strength and dramatic power with feature also of the Fantaisie et toccata. At the each, they were published and are normally known artists there. Among the pianists, as passages of a meditative quality. The first same time, concentrated into two relatively played as a complete set. well as his principal champion in his fellow movement, moving between E flat minor and short movements is music of powerful and The First Prelude is a slow and meandering, countryman and closest friend Rudolf Firkuˇsn´y, E flat major and bracketing passages of busy disturbing emotions. It is a work of both rather contemplative blues. Then follows a he could count also Rudolf Serkin. Between chromaticism, allows the freedom of fantasy technical brilliance and stark dramatic inner syncopated Scherzo of constantly shifting time 26 November and 17 December 1954, for through the absence of any bar lines to conflict. In Firkuˇsny, ´ Martinuº had both one of signatures. In 1930 Martinuº orchestrated this Serkin, he wrote his only Piano Sonata in Nice, constrain the performer. However, Martinuº the world’s greatest pianists and a man who Second Prelude for dance use, as he was to to where he had moved as a possible first provides indications of tempo changes (Poco shared his trials and tribulations at that time. do with a number of his piano pieces. The stage in his never-to-be-realized desire to agitato, Vivo, Agitato, Molto vivo) to guide the Firkuˇsny ´ was to champion this work in his Third, with the title of ‘Andante’ is marked by return home to Czechoslovakia. mood. The second movement again moves recital programmes for the rest of his life, Martinuº Adagio. It is also rather probing and This work falls into a period when Martinuº between the minor and major, this time the believing it to be one of the most important uncertain in its progress, only becoming had moved away from his earlier excursions principal key being F major. It is here that works in the piano literature of the twentieth forcefully more positive in a short central into the Impressionism, Neo-Classicism and the Martinuº is meditative yet, even though century. The work was published by Associated section. The Fourth Prelude opens with a Neo-Baroque of his Paris and earlier American the main tempo marking is Moderato, Music Publishers in New York in 1951. strongly rhythmic section, contrasting with a years, as well as his successful late production the note values and rhythm give a central part before the opening is repeated. of his first five symphonies. At this time he strong sense of forward momentum and at Eight Preludes A cheeky jazziness marks the next prelude, wrote to Safránek:ˇ ‘I am going to go in for times a sense of an undercurrent of Each of these pieces, written with humour and which is a quirky piece with its periodic fantasy!’ By the 1950s we find him reverting restlessness. Again, after calling for a poco great charm in Paris in 1929, was dedicated ‘Joplin-like’ figures. Lento is Martinu’sº tempo to the dream-world of his most successful accelerando, Martinuº brings the performer ‘à Mademoiselle Charlotte Quennehen’, who marking for the publisher’s ‘Largo’ prelude, the opera, Julietta of 1936–7 and allowing back with the main part of the movement was the French seamstress that Martinuº was to composer’s additional dolce cantabile sempre fantasy to dictate the shape of his music, yet marked first Andante moderato and then marry two years later, on 21 March 1931. solo marking giving the clue to the never allowing it to destroy an aesthetically Tranquillo. The third movement also starts out Given the collective title of Huit préludes, it prominence of the single emphasized line satisfying sense of shape and form. This is in E flat minor but is to end in a brighter seems that the individual titles were not threading its way through this largely reflective clear in his most significant works from this E major. The short, bold, slow introduction Martinu’sº but those of the Parisian publisher, piece. The Seventh Prelude is an energetic time, such as the Fantaisies symphoniques soon subsides to give way to the strongly Alphonse Leduc, who published them in 1930. Presto of headlong progress. The last is a (Symphony No. 6) of 1953, Piano Concerto rhythmic Poco allegro, itself returning to a Such titles were fashionable for piano pieces lively dance of the 1920s whose rhythmically No. 4 (Incantations) of 1956 and Piano bustling chromaticism. Martinuº turns this into published in France at that period. They are driven momentum is twice interrupted before Concerto No. 5 (Fantasia concertante) of a full-blown Allegro some forty-three bars more advanced than the earlier three sets of romping to its jazzy conclusion. 1958. before the end. 6 7 CHAN 9655 BOOK II.qxd 25/7/07 11:18 am Page 8 The work was first performed in Brno on States of America in 1912.