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The
Second World War delivered Martinů
to the shores of the USA in the 1940s.
His new homeland coupled with home sickness
combined to become the invincible spark
for his sequence of six symphonies.
Celebrity orchestral commissions seemed
to flow to him like quicksilver in those
days and he delivered brilliantly time
and again. The Fifth Symphony rather
breaks the mould because it marks the
start of a long pause of almost a decade
before his final Symphony. It is also
a break because the work was written
as a tribute to the Czech Philharmonic.
The previous four symphonies were all
written to eminent American commissions.
Whitney pushes the
Louisville players very hard developing
a greater velocity and elan than in
the other recordings in the catalogue.
This is a very swift and invigorating
performance even if the orchestra does
not sound as graceful and voluptuous
as the Czech Phil. The tension is extremely
well sustained
by Whitney and if the recording is consistently
very big and close-up it makes for a
vivid experience, the power of which
surprised me ... and I thought I knew
my Martinů symphonies. A shadow
of hardness and the still gripping single
dimension of the recording
are the only slight demerits. Serious
Martinů enthusiasts should hear
this.
The brilliantly picaresque
Intermezzo was written
in 1950 and premiered with the Louisville
Orchestra during a rare outing to Carnegie
Hall. It is a ragingly active piece
with Martinů’s usual hallmarks
in evidence including the use of the
orchestral piano for nervy ostinato
work. This recording was made in 1953.
All but the Oboe
Concerto in this anthology were
conducted by Robert Whitney. The Concerto
is conducted by the
orchestra’s concert-master. It is surely
the most recorded of all the Martinů
concertos. It is certainly his most
engaging and approachable. Two beguiling
folksong-inflected and almost Dvořákian
outer movements enclose a long middle
movement which is both
chaste and cool and in which the orchestral
piano provides atmosphere. That central
movement, in its softened shudders,
recalls a work on which Martinů
was at work at the same time: The
Epic of Gilgamesh. Marion Gibson
makes an ideal soloist - good at the
ambivalent moods of the second movement
as well as the open-hearted energy and
charm of the outer ones.
The three Estampes
are three pictures of Switzerland
or so the composer tells us. But these
are not corny postcards. This work is
of great interest as it is
Martinů’s last major purely orchestral
work. The mood is changeable with an
effervescence typical of high-tide Martinů
mixed with a misty and lichen-hung dreaminess.
In the finale the piano makes its presence
known, busy and assertive, while the
orchestra bubbles like a landscape
coming alive in spring; at times redolent
of Ravel, at others of Stravinsky and
at others of Copland.
Both the Intermezzo
and Estampes were Louisville
commissions and both are recorded here
in mono. The Symphony and Concerto are
in stereo..
A
disc essential to Martinů enthusiasts
worldwide and an indispensable perspective
of Martinů’s American years - just
as much as Munch’s Boston Martinů
6.
Rob Barnett
Marion
Gibson (oboe) 
