5 live shows and a panel dialogue; students in residence: Michael Beckerman and Ales Brezina.
Works by Bohuslav Martinu, Jaroslav Ridky, Alexander Tasman, Albert Roussel, Maurice Ravel, Josef Suk, Erwin Schulhoff, Rudolf Firkushy, Vitezslava Kapralova, Aaron Copland, and Arthur Honegger.
Performances by The Orchestra Now led by Leon Botstein, pianists Orion Weiss, Michael Brown, Piers Lane, Jeonghwan Kim, Andrey Gugnin, Erika Switzer, and Danny Driver; the Balourdet String Quartet, violinists Luosha Fang and Grace Park; violist Jason Mellow; cellist James Kim; flutist Brandon Patrick George; bassoon participant Thomas English; singers Jana McIntyre and Taylor Raven; chamber orchestra drawn type the American Symphony Orchestra, led by Zachary Schwartzman.
Within the guide of essays accompanying the Bard Martinu retrospective (12 live shows unfold over two weekends), Ivana Rentsch writes: “… he repeatedly refused to specific any opinion about his music, remarking that the works should converse for themselves.” Converse they did in the course of the 5 live shows that happened in the course of the first competition weekend. Bohuslav Martinu, born in 1890, produced an unlimited oeuvre of over 400 compositions that’s at present nearly unknown territory, even to seasoned concertgoers. Since his demise, his music was not as repeatedly programmed because it had been throughout his lifetime (1890–1959). He had been profitable in having his works heard internationally: in his native Czechoslovakia, which he left at age 30; in France, the place he lived from 1920 to 1938; and in the USA, the place he was a valued by conductors like Sergei Koussevitsky, Artur Rodzinski, Eugene Ormandy, and Charles Munch. However Martinu was a shy, even reticent man who had no real interest in self-promotion; performers and college students who understood the music’s worth did that work for him. He belonged to no college and isn’t simply labelled. He had the benefit, later to be a drawback, of writing accessible music in a contemporary model of tonality which had distinctive particular person traits: a love of energetic rhythms and syncopations (together with cross-rhythms and shifting meters), a singular melodic reward, a wealthy and infrequently tonal harmonic type, and a spontaneity and unpredictability that retains listeners on their toes. He wrote splendidly effectively for all devices and voices, creating new sounds and textures with distinctive instrumental combos and making full use of each part of the orchestra. He wrote 15 operas and plenty of choral and solo vocal music. Nearly all of his music is vivacious and life-affirming, even in his most sober items corresponding to “Memorial to Lidice,” which was written in 1942 in response to the literal annihilation of a small Czech city by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of the German overlord Reynold Heydrich. It’s a dignified, noble, hymn-like work that includes brasses that deplore and mourn this deeply tragic occasion however on the similar time elevate up the human spirit. Martinu wrote no commentary or rationalization concerning this or any of his different music—he merely let it converse for itself.
The drawback of writing tonal and accessible scores was that the post-World Conflict II avant-garde started to look on such works with suspicion, as in the event that they had been someway too straightforward and entertaining, too related to the cultural traditions that had been someway invalidated by the horrors of World Conflict II. Such music didn’t totally grapple with the thorny issues of the day. This was a interval (the Fifties and ’60s) when atonal, digital, and aleatoric music stepped forth. Figures corresponding to Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, and John Cage emerged, whereas older avant-gardists corresponding to Edgard Varèse, Anton Webern, and Charles Ives had been being introduced out of the shadows. Regardless of this, Martinu continued to provide essential works corresponding to his “Fantaisies Symphonique” (Symphony no. 6) composed for the Boston Symphony and premiered in 1955, which achieved vital success. He continued to obtain honors and commissions, producing essential work. By 1956, he had moved again to Europe, and he died in Switzerland after a number of years of poor well being.
Throughout this primary competition weekend, we heard 20 of his works, together with songs, a trio, a quartet (each for strings), a sonata for flute with piano, a sonata for piano solo, two symphonies, a jazzy ballet, one other jazz-influenced piece for big combined chamber ensemble, a concerto for piano, a concerto for harpsichord, and one other work for small orchestra together with two pianos known as ”Tre ricercari.” Michael Beckerman, one of many two students in residence who deliberate this large enterprise, is a specialist in Czech music. His opening presentation on the panel dialogue that happened on Saturday morning supplied a useful introduction for the listeners new to Martinu. He mentioned that you simply can not simply pin a label on his music, corresponding to neoclassical, jazz-influenced, tonal or atonal, folk-music oriented, Czech or in any other case, expressionist or impressionist, surreal, and so on. The reason being that he could possibly be all or any of this stuff, even throughout the similar piece. Beckerman supplied the analogy of a kaleidoscopic picture, with many bits of various colours forming a singular design. This was useful, however not the entire story, as a result of even when he’s utilizing supplies (corresponding to jazz), he doesn’t sound like anybody else—he has his personal musical fingerprint. I received’t attempt to outline it, however after listening to 5 live shows of essentially the most numerous music written in three international locations over three many years, I’m assured that I can acknowledge his music after I hear it.
The weekend started with a Friday evening all-Martinu live performance in Sosnoff Auditorium (Bard School’s giant theater) with just a few ephemeral items that appeared to stipulate a number of the a number of influences that Martinu absorbed, beginning with the nice Czech romantics, Smetana and Dvorak. Earlier than getting expelled for the second time from the Prague Conservatory (for “incorrigible negligence”), Martinu studied composition there with Josef Suk, who was Dvorak’s scholar and eventual son-in-law, in addition to a high-quality composer whose Piano Quartet we obtained to get pleasure from later. Two quick piano items, a polka and an etude, began the competition in a full of life efficiency by Orion Weiss, whose good taking part in supplied many excessive factors all through the weekend. These quick works are from a set courting from a lot later, however that could possibly be handed off as “Slavonic Dances” from Smetana or from Dvorak himself.
One other affect, that of the technical avant-garde, manifested in a fantasia for oboe, piano, and string quartet, all accompanying a theremin. (You possibly can see one in motion here.) The work was commissioned in 1944 by theremin participant Lucie Bigelow Rosen, who described acting on the instrument as “singing along with your fingers.” Carried out a little bit tentatively by Doris Chrysler, its unusual digital sound slid unintentionally out and in of pitch, though there have been some gliding tones that had been apparently intentional. The work demonstrated Martinu’s curiosity in expertise and willingness to simply accept an uncommon problem, to interact in a musical journey.
The foremost work on the primary a part of this program was the 1942 Piano Quartet (labelled “no. 1,” regardless of the absence of any subsequent such works). Right here we loved a extra typical large-scale composition in three actions, stuffed with the composer’s attribute lilting syncopations and irregular meters, in addition to high-energy pulsations in perpetual movement. This glorious work is among the few Twentieth-century piano quartets (piano plus three strings) of main stature, joined by a later instance of Aaron Copland’s (1950), whom Martinu had befriended as a colleague on the Tanglewood Music Heart composition program in 1942. The Piano Quartet served as a typical instance of the composer’s mature type, with wealthy triadic harmonies that indicated the presence of a tonality that used an unconventional syntax, sounding each trendy and authentic. Wealthy harmonies and singing melodies in novel varieties continued to characterize a lot of his music supplied throughout the remainder of the weekend.
After intermission, two large-scale orchestral works had been supplied. The primary is sometimes called his masterpiece: the “Double Concerto for Strings with Piano and Timpani” of 1938. Composed in the course of the 12 months earlier than the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, the work appears to mirror the warfare clouds gathering over Europe. Though Martinu had been in Paris for 15 years, he remained very related to his homeland and hoped to return there, one thing he was by no means capable of obtain. The “Double Concerto” is exclusive, nevertheless it bears a sure resemblance to Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste,” which was composed two years earlier and makes use of an identical orchestration, making a resemblance in sound nearly inevitable. Each works present some folkloric influences, extra pronounced in Bartok than Martinu. The parallels lengthen to the commissioning of each works by Swiss conductor and patron Paul Sacher, who led the primary performances of each. However there the resemblances finish; Martinu’s work contains a extra essential concertante piano half, sometimes soloistic however not like a typical concerto. The string writing is dense and sometimes ominous, generally seeming to threaten to the piano, as if a person is being menaced by highly effective forces past his/her management. The kettledrum half intensifies this dynamic. The gradual motion is the longest and most emotionally intense of the three. It begins with widespread rhetorical harmonies for piano and strings, at first tonal however transferring towards better dissonance, culminating in a kettledrum burst. Quieter all-string harmonies ensue, extra dissonant and dense, transferring towards tone-clusters however remaining in a minor scale—a typical mixture of tonal and modernist components, all powerfully expressive. The music accelerates, the piano anxiously rejoins, and collectively they rise to a different climax and kettledrum burst with sweeping glissandi on the piano subsiding right into a dense cloud of string sound. After a protracted silence, the piano has an prolonged, extremely chromatic solo, unavoidably suggesting a solitary determine struggling the depredations of an oppressive and impersonal power. The ultimate dynamic, quick motion returns to Martinu’s typical high-energy figures, with the piano taking part extra aggressively, beginning with high-energy buzzing in higher strings over an angular syncopated cello melody. Later, the piano’s tone clusters volley with plucked string chords. There appears to be a battle between equal forces, however progressively the tempo and power wind down whereas the music rises, painfully, to a different excessive level, concluding with a gradual and powerfully rhetorical coda.
Martinu believed that music may make its personal distinctive and untranslatable assertion, and this nice work bears that out; the imagery I’ve proposed is just one solution to pay attention, pondering maybe of the historic context through which it was created. However aside from that extra-musical interpretation, the music stands by itself to ship a robust message. It was carried out with eloquence by The Orchestra Now directed by Leon Botstein, with Michael Brown taking part in the essential piano half.
The ultimate work on this system, Symphony no. 2, composed in 1943 within the midst of World Conflict II, presents a extremely contrasting image. The place the “Double Concerto” gives weight and rhetoric, Symphony no. 2 is buoyant and optimistic. It may have been modeled after a symphony of Haydn; it’s about the identical size and has a lightweight and witty character, making full of life use of the assets of the trendy orchestra. Concerning the composition of symphonies, there may be additionally a parallel between Martinu and Brahms: Each waited till later in life to try a primary symphony (for Brahms that occurred at age 41; for Martinu at age 52). In each instances, the weightier first was adopted rapidly by a lighter and extra lyrical second (for Brahms after two years; for Martinu after one). Martinu devoted his symphony to the Czech neighborhood in Cleveland, and it was given its first efficiency there by the Cleveland Orchestra underneath Erich Leinsdorf. This was the primary time I heard a stay efficiency, and all I may suppose was “The place have you ever been all my life?” It’s a totally pleasant work, utterly accessible and stuffed with authentic sonorities and approaches to symphonic type. A lot of the scoring is for subgroups moderately than the complete ensemble, and these interact in spirited interchanges. It has been noticed that it’s nearly extra like a concerto grosso than a symphony, and certainly, Martinu wrote many concerto grosso-like works previous to taking up the duty of making symphonies. That he lastly did so was owing to commissions and requests from American conductors and orchestras, and his six symphonies composed right here had been pivotal to his reputation in America.
The second program, on Saturday afternoon in Olin, the smaller corridor, was appropriately titled “The French Connection.” It highlighted Martinu’s 16-year residence in Paris the place he encountered mentors and colleagues who left their imprints on his musical apply. Main tendencies of that interval had been neoclassicism, surrealism, and jazz, all of which Martinu absorbed into his inventive character. Two essential French composers figured right here: Albert Roussel, who served as a mentor, and Maurice Ravel, as an admired colleague. Roussel is an interesting determine who’s much less well-known than he needs to be; he deserves his personal Bard Pageant, which could possibly be simply as crammed stuffed with fantastic, different music of many genres as Martinu’s. Right here all we obtained to listen to was a brief tune, “Jazz dans la nuit,” to a textual content by René Dommange, which is horny and exoticizing within the method of modern Nineteen Twenties café music. (A translation was not supplied.) Ravel’s beautiful Violin Sonata (1923–1927) additional exemplified jazz affect in its “Blues” second motion, with the plucked violin mimicking a New Orleans jazz banjo whereas the piano laid down an nearly good reproduction of a 12-bar blues. The equally beautiful efficiency was provided by violinist Grace Park and pianist Michael Brown. Previous these each in this system and chronologically was Martinu’s “Foxtrot,” with Brown once more on the piano. A witty, jazzy, and virtuosic bassoon sonatina by expatriate Alexandre Tansman was included, though it was not composed till 1952; nonetheless, Tansman was “on the Parisian scene” within the ‘20s, and his participating work supplied an excuse for us to get pleasure from a superb efficiency by Thomas English, completely matched by the insouciant piano half as rendered by competition favourite Danny Driver. Martinu’s String Trio no. 1 from 1923 confirmed that by that date, he had already discovered his distinctive voice whereas totally assimilating the French influences round him. The trio begins with a wild mélé of string sounds and dissonant harmonies, as if leaping into the center of one thing, evoking the picture of a cloud of rosin mud rising from the gamers’ bows. There observe a number of plucking and a really extremely positioned cello melody accompanied by a folksy om-pah after which an sudden gradual ending to the primary motion. The second (slower) motion featured some very sonorous taking part in from violist Jason Mallow, who has a larger-than-usual instrument with a richly projecting sound. This served the music very effectively, as Martinu makes some extent of giving the viola the underside half and inserting the cello subsequent to the violin in a excessive register, producing a novel texture (additionally utilized by Haydn!). Extra folksy om-pahs and dance rhythms adopted within the finale, which developed right into a fugue after which a race to the end. This work effectively illustrated Beckerman’s picture of a kaleidoscope, one that would have been designed by Salvator Dali.
An especially endearing work of Martinu’s, not significantly jazzy or neoclassical, is his Flute Sonata, written in 1945 to commemorate the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Germans. Completely suited to the lighter sound of the solo instrument with a piano half that merges with it seamlessly, the work flows effortlessly from one buoyant, lyrical melody to the following, however beneath is a heartfelt sincerity that deepens the joyful floor impression. It obtained among the finest performances of the competition to date, by Brandon Patrick George, whose gold flute sang Martinu’s melodies gloriously.
The live performance concluded with Josef Suk’s Piano Quartet, composed when he was 17 and a scholar of Dvorak. It proved to be effectively made and effectively price listening to, making me keen to return to his extra mature works. Alternatively, it gave the impression of Dvorak attempting to make extravagant gestures, however not fairly attaining the extent of magic that we expertise within the music of that grasp himself. The performers, together with pianist Brown, made the strongest attainable case for this work.
Having gotten this far, I’ll attempt to encapsulate the remainder of the weekend. On Saturday evening, we heard a unusual, jazzy Symphony no. 2 by the intelligent and iconoclastic Weimar Republic determine Erwin Schulhoff, whose music has been rediscovered in latest many years together with different composers who perished in the course of the Holocaust. His type is a mix of neo-Hindemithian concord and jazz (Schulhoff used to improvise piano jazz on Berlin radio). The third motion, “Scherzo all jazz,” used muted trumpet, saxophone, and banjo. You get the image: a form of anti-symphony considerably within the spirit of Kurt Weill, to go along with the instances. The opposite non-Martinu piece was included on this program as an homage to a pianist who was a detailed good friend and essential performer of Martinu’s music (and later a good friend of the Bard Music Pageant): Rudolf Firkusny. This was his one-movement Piano Concertino, composed as a conservatory commencement piece at age 17. It had applicable fireworks for pianist Piers Lane to ignite and a considerably grandiose ambiance paying homage to Liszt. A extra distinctive work for piano and orchestra was Martinu’s Piano Concerto no. 4, composed for Firkusny in 1956, known as “Incantation.” Fully unconventional in type (in two actions) the work dips its toe into the concerto grosso idiom with outstanding components for harp, flute, and oboe. However the solo piano half dominates with fierce virtuosity, nailed with wonderful agility and power by pianist Jeongwhan Kim. At this late stage in his profession, Martinu appears to have discarded most of the typical options of the classical genres through which he continued to work (concerto, symphony, string quartet). In all these varieties, he allowed the music to drift in an nearly dream-like approach from one thought to a different, maybe analogous to his behavior of composing mentally whereas taking lengthy walks at the hours of darkness, usually getting misplaced within the course of. This could not suggest that the music lacks coherence, nevertheless it does present a listening expertise that has few acquainted landmarks, simply a number of dreamy and infrequently memorable magnificence in addition to appreciable power and pleasure. One characteristic of those (and different) works is what I referred to in my notes as “sound clouds,” an nearly formless hovering mass of instrumental sonority that doesn’t reveal a pulse or clear texture. Such a “cloud” marks the start of the second motion of the concerto, in addition to the beginning of the most important work on this program, his last “symphony” that he entitled “Fantaisies Symphoniques (Symphony no. 6)” of 1953, written for Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony. This colourful rating was impressed by Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” a title he nearly used right here however thought higher of it. In contrast to the Berlioz, this work has no story connected, neither is there a symbolic theme or repetition scheme. The shape could be very unconventional, ending with a gradual motion which incorporates an essential violin solo. The impression the piece left was that of a really colourful dream stuffed with vivid pictures that elude full recall. It’s clear from their recording that Munch and the orchestra liked the work, as did TON and its conductor.
An analogous dream-like unconventionality characterizes Martinu’s last Quartet no. 7 (subtitled “Concerto da Digital camera” [“Chamber Concerto”]) of 1947, though most of the musical pictures had been simpler to understand: The primary motion recollects Dvorak however with a wider harmonic area; the second references earlier music (particularly of the Renaissance) in what he known as his “madrigal type”; and the third returns to Dvorak for an brisk folks dance and a hymn-like conclusion. The piece was performed with appropriately scrappy power, together with some foot tapping, by the Balourdet Quartet. Two earlier works on Sunday’s applications (one every) dove extra deeply into the affect of jazz. The primary was “Les Rondes” of 1930 for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, two violins, and piano. It was an actual discover, one which anticipated Stravinsky’s Septet by greater than 30 years. It displayed influences from Janacek’s “nature-sound” music, folks fiddling, dance music, New Orleans jazz, Russian music—you identify it. It was essentially the most entertaining piece I’ve encountered in a very long time, that’s, till later within the afternoon after I heard the opposite jazzy work, a ballet entitled “Revue de Delicacies” (“Kitchen Revue”). This ballet of 1927 has an absurdist libretto about flirtatious cooking utensils and different home objects and is equally pleasant. The numbers on this suite of 1930 embody a tango and a Charleston. The idea echoes of Ravel’s “L’enfant et les Sortilèges” carried out at Tanglewood final week and reviewed in these pages. However the musical embodiment is totally authentic.
Different works heard within the earlier Sunday live performance had been: Vitazslava Kapralova’s String Quartet, an intense and precocious work by a 20-year-old scholar of Martinu’s for whom he developed a crush and who died on the age of 25; plus Martinu’s last composition, “Variations on a Slovak Theme” for Cello and Piano (1959), written when he was conscious that he was dying. Provided that reality, one would suppose that the second variation, with its wealthy harmonies stuffed with Czech nostalgia and Dvorak references, was some type of farewell to life, nevertheless it was adopted by two extra variations of the liveliest character: a scherzo together with swinging quintuple rhythms (suppose Brubeck’s “Take 5”) and a wildly dashing last allegro within the Lydian mode. The virtuosic cello taking part in was by James Kim, accompanied by the dashing pianist Danny Driver.
The ultimate live performance on Sunday afternoon included the aforementioned “Revue”; an enormous piano sonata from 1954 carried out brilliantly from reminiscence by Orion Weiss; a Harpsichord Concerto that displayed the everyday stability issues of that style (mixing harpsichord with a gaggle of recent devices), performed and carried out by Mahon Esfahani; Aaron Copland’s splendid Sextet for string quartet, clarinet, and piano (included due to that Copand-Martinu connection beforehand talked about); a pastoral, low-key “Concerto da Digital camera” (1948) by Arthur Honegger; and, lastly, one other splendid and unclassifiable piece by Martinu, “Tre ricercari” (1938) for chamber ensemble with two pianos. Martinu’s curiosity in early music reveals in his use of titles like “madrigal,” “canzona,” “toccata,” and “ricercar.” The latter time period was used for very totally different sorts of items between the mid-Sixteenth and mid-18th centuries, and it isn’t clear what he understood by the time period, nevertheless it served to spark the creation of one other uniquely imaginative sound world, considerably neo-baroque à la Stravinsky, with a combined ensemble through which two pianos present a flowing undercurrent however which doesn’t sound in any respect like a concerto. This world is brightly lit, colourful, joyous, and energetic, like a lot of the Parisian music from the ‘20s, however with a wider vary of textures and moods, an extended narrative arc, and finally offering a barely mysterious however extremely satisfyingly wealthy expertise. And this additionally sums up the impression of all 5 live shows of principally Martinu.
