Martinu

The Czech Bohuslav Martinů and the Finn Einojuhani Rautavaara may not seem to have much in common, but both have adopted an attitude free of musical puritanism, constantly finding new sources of inspiration which they explored without taboos. Explaining the heterogeneity of his musical language over the years, Rautavaara stated that, as a Finn, he stands ‘between East and West, between the tundra and Europe, between Lutheran and Orthodox faith’. Premiered in 1999, his Piano Concerto No. 3 has managed to join the small group of late twentieth-century concertos that are now part of the repertoire. Its subtitle, ‘Gift of Dreams’, seems to describe perfectly the character of the music in the first two movements, before a finale that exhibits a more driven, anxious manner.

Dvorák's Love Songs were drawn from his early composition Cypresses, a set of 18 songs set to the poetry of Gustav Pfleger-Moravsky. The texts are pretty much typical of 19th century love poems, while Dvorák's music is surprisingly commonplace for a composer of such rich melodic gifts. The first few measures of New Miniatures instantly identify them as being written by Martinu, with their spiky harmonies and syncopated rhythms. Indeed, it's these rarely heard songs that take up the majority of this disc, a fortunate thing for us and for this strangely underperformed major 20th-century composer.

Sometimes great things are worth waiting for… It has been nearly ten years since the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra made new recordings available on a regular and worldwide basis. This is Ondine's first release in its new groundbreaking partnership with The Philadelphia Orchestra, which calls for a minimum of three recordings to be released per year (for more information click here). The partnership agreement has attracted international media attention, including major articles throughout the international press (e.g. The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2005; Gramophone, July 2005).

Cellist Johannes Moser and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov present Bohuslav Martinů’s complete cello sonatas. These works belong to the most significant twentieth-century repertoire for cello and piano. Reflecting Martinů’s troubled existence, defined by wartime, emigration, longing for the homeland, yet also full of hope and life-affirming energy, the music seems entirely topical in our own troubled times. After their award-winning recording of works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff from 2016, Moser and Korobeinikov demonstrate their congeniality once more, fully realizing the extreme interdependence of cello and piano in these works.

This disc combines Hartmann's Symphony No. 1 (1937/1948), a requiem for the victims of the Nazis and the dead of World War II, using Walt Whitman's verses from "Leaves of Grass" written for the dead of the Civil War and a soprano singer, with anti-war pieces by Arnold Schoenberg, Bouslav Martinu, and Luigi Nono.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of today’s most highly regarded violinists, here performs works by two Central European composers that also exemplify various currents in classical music during the period 1920-1950. Although it only received its first performance in 1973, Bohuslav Martinů’s Violin Concerto No. 1 had been composed 40 years earlier in the neo-classical idiom championed by Stravinsky. In contrast, the composer’s Second Violin Concerto (1943) is written in a more lyrical vein, partly to suit the playing style of Mischa Elman, the violinist who commissioned it. In both works Zimmermann is partnered by Bamberger Symphoniker under the orchestra’s chief conductor Jakub Hrůša, one of the leading Martinů conductors of today.

In the second of four Hyperion discs dedicated to the works for violin and orchestra by Czech-French-American-Swiss composer Bohuslav Martinu, violinist Bohuslav Matousek with Christopher Hogwood and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra join two of the composer's typically atypical works: the Concerto da camera for violin with string orchestra, piano and percussion and the Concerto for violin and piano with orchestra.

This wonderful disc is another souvenir of the great Czech pianist Rudolf Firkusny's return to his homeland after the triumph of democracy in the early 1990s. We are very lucky that he lived to make this recording. Firkusny was a personal friend of the composer, and he gave the premieres of all three of these concertos. He plays them with a sovereign mastery that brooks no competition, and the music itself is marvelous. The Fourth Concerto, subtitled Incantations, is one of the century's most exciting and unusual scores for piano and orchestra, while the other two explore both the classical and Romantic heritage of the form. This is a recording that has "greatness" stamped all over it.

Mahan Esfahani’s first concerto album for Hyperion is everything the listener could wish for: definitive performances of three marvellous – and unexpected – works by three of the last century’s Czech masters.

Mahan Esfahani’s first concerto album for Hyperion is everything the listener could wish for: definitive performances of three marvellous – and unexpected – works by three of the last century’s Czech masters.