Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/01/2005, uploaded on 03/23/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

"10/10 - Koh offers three works for violin and orchestra by three very different Eastern European composers, none of them over-exposed and all of them distinctive. In other words, the complete program is as coherent and well thought-out as the performances are outstanding." - ClassicsToday.com

"Jennifer Koh is a risk-taking, high-octane player of the kind who grabs the listener by the ears and refuses to let go. . . . A scorching talent that should on no account be missed." - The Strad

"[Carlos] Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra perform . . . with exuberance, commitment and edge." - The New York Times

Eight years younger than Szymanowski, Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) spent his formative years in very diff erent circumstances. Instead of living on a country estate, he grew up in a church bell tower, where his father worked three jobs: cobbler, bell-ringer, and town fi re warden. The town was Polička in Bohemia, then a province of the Austrian Empire, now the Czech Republic. The boy showed amazing talent on the violin; townspeople helped his family raise money to send him to the Prague Conservatory in 1906. Though he never achieved academic success, the wider artistic horizons of Prague stimulated a number of his early compositions. A major event, pointing the way to future surroundings and experiences, was the 1908 Prague premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, a work that deeply aff ected and inspired Martinů. He grew discontented with conservatory routine and returned home, where the World War I cataclysm passed him by: never robust, he managed to avoid military conscription while continuing to compose and give music lessons. He would return to Prague to play violin in the Czech Philharmonic, and the first of his many travels abroad took place when the orchestra toured Western Europe, including Paris, in 1919. Four years later, he decided to abandon symphonic playing and returned to Paris to take advanced composition lessons with Albert Roussel.

In Paris, Martinů encountered not only the teaching of Roussel but also the revolutionary styles of Stravinsky and the iconoclastic group known as Les Six, which included Poulenc, Milhaud, and Honegger. Like them, Martinů was fascinated by the new transatlantic style called jazz. He was also influenced by the 1920s trends known as neo-Classic and neo-Baroque: a look back toward forms and instrumentations of the 18th century reinterpreted with 20th-century sounds. His works of the 1920s and Thirties were performed in Paris and also back home in the newly-created nation of Czechoslovakia. He also attracted the notice of Russian émigré conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who would have a powerful infl uence on his later career.

Perhaps his most important encounter in Paris, however, was with Charlotte Quennehen, whom he married in 1931. A professional dressmaker and woman of exceptional resourcefulness, steadfastness, and loyalty, she stood by her husband through poverty, infi delity, exile, and illness. The Martinůs' situation in Paris became precarious in the late 1930s, after the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia. As the Czech opposition's cultural attaché in Paris, Martinů aided a number of Czech artists who tried to find refuge in France, but the approaching Nazi occupation forced him to become a refugee himself. In 1940, the couple left Paris for Marseilles, then Lisbon, then New York.

Martinů found teaching positions at Vermont's Middlebury College and at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, but was affl icted by depression, homesickness, and a lack of English fluency. He never adjusted well to life in the United States, but it was in this country that his compositional career really took off , thanks to Koussevitzky, who had left Paris to become music director of the BSO. One of the most remarkable conductors of the 20th century, Koussevitzky had a passionate commitment to new music and to encouraging talent. His foundation commissioned countless compositions and he mentored Leonard Bernstein among many others. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Martinů's Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Boston Symphony in November 1942. In the audience was the celebrated violinist Mischa Elman who, at Koussevitzky's 8 9 suggestion, asked Martinů to write a new violin concerto, which Elman fi rst performed in Boston, December 1943.

Continually encouraged by Koussevitzky, Martinů wrote four more symphonies during the 1940s and continued his teaching activities, but still felt alienated from American life. He returned to Europe, though never to Czechoslovakia, and died of cancer in Switzerland in 1959. His remoteness from the land of his birth, oppressed first by fascism, then by communism, led him to take some inspiration from Bohemian folk music. It's a major thread in his compositional fabric, alongside the many other influences he assimilated into a vigorous, sometimes abrasive, but always attention-compelling style.

Mischa Elman was an exuberant and virtuosic violinist. Martinů (a violinist himself) seems to have understood his new patron practically on fi rst contact and crafted for him an extroverted work that blends tunefulness, dissonance, and rhythmic complexity into a meaty romp for both soloist and orchestra. If Martinů was depressed about being an émigré in a strange land while the world was plunged into a frightful war, those circumstances seem largely to have been put aside here.

A dramatic opening statement in the orchestra dies down to let the soloist enter with an athletic theme that transforms into a more lyrical statement. There's a sense of dialogue between soloist and orchestra that is constantly disturbed by rhythmic displacement: accents are not on the first note of the bar. You can see it if you're looking at the score, but that's not necessary: you can hear it in the energetic edginess the music acquires as it progresses. The moderate Andante tempo of the opening shifts to Poco Allegro; the violin quickens the pace and the orchestra responds to its scurrying arpeggios with a big "tutti" climax. The rhetorical exchanges continue until a dissonant orchestral chord ushers in the soloist's first cadenza, which ruminates on all the themes introduced earlier and further elaborates them. A lyrical passage marked Moderato ends the movement.

The Andante Moderato middle movement begins with a folklike theme in the orchestra and a gorgeous solo for the violin, gently supported by the orchestra. The tempo picks up in the solo part and then slackens again as the orchestra restores the bucolic opening mood enhanced with rich harmonies. Solo winds usher the violin back into a short cadenza-like passage that leads to a quiet end.

The Poco Allegro finale starts out with the soloist leading a village dance. Rapid figurations and fleeting motives are tossed back and forth between violin and orchestra. The dance briefly becomes an orchestral march tune, but the soloist turns the mood back into a dance, with octaves, double-stops, and virtuoso patterns that exploit the instrument's full range. The orchestra responds with a declamatory statement dominated by the brasses, then in rondo fashion the violin returns to prominence with its dance. Martinů provides the soloist with a cadenza that introduces a touch of melancholy, but sunshine returns as soloist and orchestra plunge together into a brilliant final celebration of the dance.

Andrea Lamoreaux is music director of WFMT-FM, Chicago's classical-music station

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Cedille Records is the recording label of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation, a publicly-supported, not-for-profit, organization devoted to promoting the finest musicians, ensembles, and composers in the Chicago area by producing and releasing their efforts on audiophile-quality recordings. The recordings and their promotion are designed to stimulate interest in these performers and composers and bring their artistry to a wider audience. Cedille Records is also dedicated to promoting interest in neglected areas of the classical repertory by presenting masterpieces that have been overlooked by other recording companies.