At last, the truth can be told: from the back of this year’s lavish Bard program book. The sleeping giant of Czech music stirs! ALL HAIL MARTINU.
Tag: Bohuslav Martinu
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Czech Neoclassical Music on The Lost Chord
Neoclassicism in music was a reaction against what was perceived as the garish effusiveness and gooey excesses of late Romanticism.
Contemporary composers, in search of a new lucidity, turned their attention to the 18th century, revisiting its musical processes, though reinterpreting them through a distinctly 20th century prism. Stravinsky was the master, but neoclassicism swept the world.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have three cheery examples of Czech neoclassicism, including works by Ilja Hurník (his “Sonata da Camera”), Iša Krejči (his “Serenade for Orchestra,” conducted by Karel Ančerl) and Bohuslav Martinu (his Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra).
These composers – well, Krejči and Martinu, anyway – manage to balance the clarity of the Enlightenment with an unmistakably Czech national sound.
Hurník’s work is perhaps the purest, in terms of looking back. The term “Sonata da Camera” recalls music of the Baroque and Classical eras, as does the clarity of its instrumentation, involving flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord. Each movement begins as if it were ripped from the pages of history and then gradually squeezed like a lemon, leaving a tangy, contemporary aftertaste.
All of this music is calculated to lift your spirits. I do hope you’ll join me for “Balanced Czechs,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
Tightrope walker by Jiří Sliva
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Czech Composers’ Forbidden Love Affairs
Anyone at all acquainted with the life story of Leoš Janáček knows about his relationship with Kamila Stasslova. Stasslova was the married woman, 38 years Janáček’s junior, who was the recipient of his “intimate letters” (hence, the subtitle of his autobiographical String Quartet No. 2). Though the relationship was a chaste one, she instilled in the composer an ardor which propelled him into the creation of a series of masterworks that spanned his final decade. This is the music which essentially made Janáček’s reputation as a composer for the ages.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have two more examples of Czech extramarital love that resulted in flowering creativity. Vitězslava Kaprálová undoubtedly would be much better known had she not died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Kaprálová was already launched on a promising, if sadly abbreviated, trajectory as a brilliant composer-conductor, attaining a level of respect unusual at the time for a woman in her field. Her teachers included Vitězslav Novák, Václav Talich, Charles Munch, Nadia Boulanger, and Bohuslav Martinů.
Her relationship with Martinů deepened into one of romantic love, which fueled some of the older composer’s most resonant works, as he grappled with the emotional turmoil, caught as he was between his wife and an irresistible attraction to his star pupil.
Kaprálová reciprocated his feelings, in the meantime producing a number of pieces under his influence, then submitting them for his appraisal. One such work was the “Partita for Piano and String Orchestra,” composed in 1938-39. Martinů is said to have made a substantial contribution to its final form.
The idea for the thesis of tonight’s show grew out of a consideration of Zdeněk Fibich, the unsung Czech master, who was roughly nine years younger than Dvořák. Fibich too suffered a turbulent emotional life. When his first wife was about to give birth to twins, one of her sisters came to help out with the delivery. The sister and one of the newborns fell ill and died. Within two years, they were followed by the other child and Fibich’s wife.
Fibich promptly married another of his wife’s sisters, only to abandon her and the son she bore him, for one of his pupils, Anežka Schulzová. Schulzová would serve not only as his muse, but also as an artistic collaborator. Fibich documented the affair musically in his collection of piano pieces, “Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences,” composed between 1892 and 1899. He would reference material from this collection in a number of other works written during the final decade of his life.
One of these was the Symphony No. 2, a musical remembrance of the day he declared his love to Schulzová. Material from Fibich’s “Moods” forms the basis of the second movement of the symphony, with another heartfelt quotation in the finale.
Life is complicated.
I hope you’ll join me for “Bohemian Lifestyle,” illicit love in Czech Music, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT,” on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Vítězslava Kaprálová (center) with Bohuslav Martinů
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Czech Center NY Celebrates Martinů
Among its multifarious attractions, Czech Center New York always seems to have something interesting musical going on.
I remember traveling in to have a look at the original manuscript of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, brought back to the U.S. for the first time since the composer returned home with it to Bohemia in 1895. The Czech Center reception followed a performance of the piece by the Czech Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, the venue at which the symphony received its world premiere, by the New York Philharmonic, in 1893. At the time, Dvořák was serving as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America, then located at 47-49 West 25th Street.
It certainly was a memorable evening, as afterward I got to meet Jiri Bělohlávek, the orchestra’s chief conductor, and Véronique Firkušný, daughter of the late pianist Rudolf Firkušný. Furthermore, I actually shook hands with the composer’s grandson, who spoke no English but was his spitting image.
This year, the Czech Center has shifted its focus to composer Bohuslav Martinů and the 80th anniversary of his arrival in New York. Martinů – still the sleeping giant of Czech music, when compared to Dvořák, Smetana, or even Janáček – arrived here from France, which he fled just ahead of the Nazi occupation. Rudolf Firkušný was one of the musicians who came to Martinů’s aid in the U.S. No doubt in gratitude, Martinů dedicated this Third and Fourth Piano Concertos to him.
The commemoration is being marked by concerts, commentary, masterclasses, and online exhibitions. Here’s what’s been posted so far.
The Year of Bohuslav Martinů in New York:
https://new-york.czechcentres.cz/en/program/rok-bohuslava-martinu-v-new-yorku-opening
Things to come:
https://new-york.czechcentres.cz/en/blog/2021/02/80-let-od-cesty-martinu-z-evropy-do-ameriky
Véronique Firkusny and conductor Jakub Hrůša:
Works of Bohuslav Martinů / The Czech Way:
https://new-york.czechcentres.cz/en/program/dila-bohuslava-martinu-v-podani-ceskych-interpretu
Works of Bohuslav Martinů / The American Way:
https://new-york.czechcentres.cz/en/program/dila-bohuslava-martinu-v-podani-americkych-interpretu
I’ve been a Martinů nut since I first heard his “Rhapsody-Concerto” for Viola and Orchestra played by Joseph de Pasquale and the Philadelphia Orchestra back in the 1980s. It’s a puzzle to me why he is not more frequently performed here in the U.S. For anyone who loves Dvořák, there is much to enjoy in Martinů’s music. He’s Dvořák for a mechanized age. I think Dvořák himself, being so fond of trains, would have admired it.
If nothing else, check out this stylish video – complete with double-breasted suits, booze, and cigarettes – an invigorating performance of Martinů’s “Bergerettes,” courtesy of Czech Center New York.
FUN FACT: Martinů taught at Princeton University, commuting from New York, from 1948 to 1951.
More about Czech Center New York here:
https://new-york.czechcentres.cz/en/about-us
Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony returns to New York:
https://www.bohemianbenevolent.org/news/making-history-new-world-symphony-manuscript-in-bnh
Martinů’s “Rhapsody-Concerto”
And a work for theremin!
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Kipling’s Muse Koechlin & Martinu
Many composers have been inspired by the writings of Rudyard Kipling, but few more so than Charles Koechlin.
Koechlin is probably better recognized these days as the orchestrator who assisted Fauré and Debussy than for any of his own music. He was fascinated by the movies and wrote works inspired by a number of cinematic celebrities. This yielded, among other things, his “Seven Stars Symphony,” with movements dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others. The figure he most adored is the now largely-forgotten actress Lillian Harvey, who he admired from afar and honored with a number of compositions.
In addition, Koechlin was an amateur astronomer and an accomplished photographer. He became quite the athlete, in order to keep up his strength after a youthful brush with tuberculosis. As I know I’ve pointed out before, he also had one of the most enviable beards in all of classical music.
Like Percy Grainger, Koechlin harbored a lifelong affection for Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and returned to the subject often throughout his career – beginning with some song settings in 1899 and running through the symphonic poem “The Bandar-Log,” completed in 1940.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear his symphonic poem, “The Law of the Jungle.” Then we’ll turn to the ballet, “The Butterfly that Stamped,” by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.
Like Koechlin, Martinu was prolific by anyone’s standards. And like Koechlin there is so much Martinu nobody has ever heard. In addition to six symphonies, which at least get some play, he wrote concertos of every stripe, as well as 15 operas, a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works, and – believe it or not – 14 ballets.
“The Butterfly that Stamped” was inspired by a tale from Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”
Get ready to go wild! It’s a Kipling double-bill. Join me for “Kipling Coupling” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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