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Bohuslav
MARTINŮ (1890-1959) Complete Piano Music - Volume 4
Seven Czech Dances "Borova" H 195 (1930) [12:21]
Les ritournelles H 227 (1932) [9:59]
A Note in a Scrapbook No.1 H 222 (1932) [1:05]
A Note in a Scrapbook No.2 H 241 (1935) [0:45]
Improvisation H 333 (1951) [0:43]
Dumka for Piano No 2 “Elegie” H 250 (1936) [2:13]
Adagio “In memoriam” H 362 (1957) [2:01]
For Dancing H 158 (post 1923) [0:54]
Dumka for Piano No 1 “Contemplation” H 249 (1936) [2:30]
Bagatelle for Piano “Morceau facile” H 323 (1949) [0:49]
Rujana H 100 [5:23]
Barcarolle for Piano H 326 (1949) [1:38]
Dumka for Piano No. 3 285bis (1941) [1:25]
Quatre Mouvements for Piano H 170 (post 1923) [7:17]
Prelude for Piano No.1 “on the theme of the Marseillaise” H
85 (1913) [2:40]
Prelude for Piano No.2 in F minor H 86 (1913) [1:45]
Instructive Duo for the Nervous H 145 (post 1923) [0:46]
Procession of the Cats on Solstice Night H 122 (1919) [1:07]
Piece for the Little Evas H 242 (1935) [1:23]
Mazurka for Piano “Homage to Paderewski” H 284 (1941) [2:04]
On T.S.F Waves H 173bis (1929) [1:02]
Scherzo H 138 bis (post 1923) [3:53]
[Untitled Piece] H 141 (post 1923) [3:08]
Prelude H140 [1:47]
Giorgio Koukl
(piano)
rec. RSI Lugano June and August 2006 NAXOS 8.570215 [68:38]
The intrepid Giorgio Koukl
has now reached volume four in his estimable and important series
devoted to the solo piano works. He fuses acute appreciation
of dance and rhythmic patterns with questions of sonority. And
he is at all times conscious of the scale of things. This is
important given that he now turns to a number of works that
have never been recorded before – there are nine such in this
disc.
The
programme is cleverly constructed. Compositional dates range
from 1913 to 1957 – pretty much the entire span of his active
life – and allow us to see more clearly the sheer range of influences
and preoccupations, from pre-Parisian jeux d’esprit to the late
in memoriam piece for Vítězslava
Kaprálová.
The
recital begins with Seven Czech Dances "Borova" H
195 – one of the better-known works. Martinů collectors
will long have leaned on the Supraphon set recorded by Emil
Leichner. And though other players have ventured into the discographical
waters – there’s a series on Tudor for instance - it’s to Leichner
that adherents have generally looked in this repertoire; rightly
so, as he’s an impressive guide. There’s little between Koukl
and Leichner in these seven dances except perhaps in No.7 where
Leichner is the quicker and perhaps the more biting. The recording
qualities vary with Koukl’s sounding a touch harder and therefore
both more incisive and less intimate.
Les
ritournelles H 227 sees Koukl quicker than Leichner
in all movements and there are correspondingly big differences
in characterisation throughout.
Koukl is not inclined to reprise Leichner’s rather more seigniorial
approach – and the former’s playing is stylish, committed
and energetic. Both men bring a remarkably different sound
world in their disparate approaches to one of the composer’s
most exciting sets though neither is as fast as Firkušný in
his RCA traversal [74321 886822 – an all-Martinů two CD set which includes
concerto performances]. No one can really match Firkušný’s
tonal qualities and sheer vitality either.
The
Dumka for Piano No 2 “Elegie” H 250 is a piece of substance
and the Adagio was written for Vítězslava
Kaprálová and her father in 1957, towards the end of the composer’s
life. It sounds strangely Beethovenian but not overtly lachrymose – there’s
a strong stoic vein running through it, Martinů binding its rhetoric to ages past. Other pieces,
especially the nine previously unrecorded ones, are of slighter
import but exciting for the Completist. Some last for less than
a minute. Pro tanec (For Dancing) has a touch of Ježek
about it but Rujana is more intriguing. It’s a seascape – very
unusually for the composer - but its writing is too rugged for
impressionism; maybe pictorialism would fit the stylistic bill
better. Still – a valuable restoration. The Prelude No.2 in
F minor bears its Chopinesque imprint strongly; there are a
couple of bizarrely named titles as well that together last
less than two minutes - Instructive
Duo for the Nervous and Procession
of the Cats on Solstice Night. These are both School of
Paris inspirations.
So
Koukl has cast his net wisely and well, mixing established classics
of Martinů’s piano canon with works that none but a manuscript
editor would have heard. The result is that volume four proves
indispensable to the Martinů completist. Don’t expect revelations
from the previously unrecorded pieces but they do round out
his enthusiasms and preoccupations very nicely. There is, one
hopes, still more to come from this series, which will make
it an important contribution to Martinů studies on disc
for years to come.
Jonathan Woolf
And a further perspective from Bob Briggs ...
I must put my cards on the table at the very beginning. Much as
I love and admire the music of Bohuslav Martinů, it would
be unfair of me to say that everything he wrote is worth hearing.
He wrote too much music and lacked a self-critical faculty which
would have allowed him to rethink some of his works. Like Paul
Hindemith, rather than take a second look at a work he would
simply pass on to the next.
Therefore, when I received this disk – the last in Naxos’s four volume
survey of Martinů’s complete piano music – my heart sank
at the prospect of 38 tracks which, apart from three “major” works – Borova
- Seven Czech Dances, Les ritournelles and Quatre
mouvements, 12, 10 and 7 minutes respectively – seemed to
contain shavings from the floor of the woodshed.
I admit right now that I could not have been more stupid. This
disk is simply delightful. Most of the pieces are in various
dance
forms, and at times there’s the naughty tinge of jazz, but,
perhaps surprisingly, there’s more than sufficient variety within
the programme to keep the attention.
The works cover the whole forty-plus years of Martinů’s
composing career, from the sea fantasy, Ruyana, to the Adagio
in memoriam, commemorating Vaclav Kapril and his daughter Vítězslava Kaprálová, who died tragically young, both composers. Vítězslava was
also Martinů’s student and lover. It has been reported that
the manuscript score of Martinů’s 5th String
Quartet was littered with risqué references
to this relationship but these were excised, after the composers’ death,
due to the politics of the Czechoslovakian state of the time.
There are no masterpieces here, just very enjoyable miniatures,
mostly written in Martinů’s clearly defined neo-classical
style. The scholarship is of a high degree, ferreting out even
the
most miniature of works and presenting them for us.
I am sure that most of these pieces were dashed off without
a thought for performance: Martinů just felt the need to
express himself in a certain way at a certain time. What they
don’t
give you is the impression that here is one of the major symphonists of
the 20th century, but they do show him in an agreeably
different light.
I made the mistake of judging the book by its cover and dismissing
the contents of this CD without playing it. Under no circumstances
must you make the same idiotic mistake.
Over the past few months I have had the very great pleasure
of welcoming a number of Naxos’s new releases and I am quickly
running out of superlatives for this company. They never seem
to put a foot
wrong.
Bob Briggs
Reviews of the other volumes in this series
Volume 1 - 8.557914:
reviewreview
Volume 2
- 8.557918: review
Volume 3
- 8.557919: review
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