Boosey & Hawkes

Martinu cycle by BBC Symphony Orchestra at Barbican

(September 2009)

The major thread running through the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s 2009/10 season is a complete cycle of Bohuslav Martinu’s symphonies, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death this year.

The Martinu cycle is launched in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of the season at the Barbican in London on 3 October. Symphony No.1 is conducted by Jirí Belohlávek, the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and a leading interpreter of Martinu’s music as witnessed by his acclaimed concert performance of Julietta last season. The symphonic cycle is then spaced in Barbican concerts throughout the season, culminating on 8 May with one of the composer’s finest achievements, Symphony No. 6 'Fantaisies symphoniques', again conducted by Jirí Belohlávek.

> Listen to soundclips of Martinu’s symphonies
> Buy a CD box set of Martinu’s symphonies

The six Martinu symphonies occupy a 15-year period of the composer’s life when he lived in exile in the USA. In 1940 Martinu fled Paris to escape the Nazi invasion of France, travelling towards the United States via Spain and Portugal with financial support from Swiss friends including Paul Sacher and Ernest Ansermet. He reached New York in 1941 with an American visa describing him as a ‘blacklisted intellectual’. Thanks to the support of Serge Koussevitzky Symphony No.1 was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the success of the premiere prompted a series of symphonic commissions for US orchestras, including the Cleveland, Philadelphia and Boston orchestras.

Between 1942 and 1946 Martinu composed five symphonies at a rate of one each year. He strove in the United States for ‘a new lyricism, something rather rare in modern music’. Patrick Lambert has described how ‘the war-time symphonies composed for American orchestras are notable for their spontaneity and organic development, the rhythmic freshness of their strongly syncopated melodies, the rare beauty of their harmony, and above all an indefinable Czech aura that suggests a latter-day Dvorak.’

Martinu suffered a fall from a balcony in 1946, resulting in serious injury and a temporary interruption in his ability to write music. So it was not until 1951 that he began work on Fantaisies symphoniques, his sixth and final symphony. This great visionary work fuses symphonic form with the neo-impressionist fantasy world of his opera Julietta, and is rightly regarded as the culmination of the symphonic cycle and one of his most characteristic works. It was completed in Paris in 1953 and premiered by Charles Munch in Boston in 1955.

In parallel with the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s symphonic cycle, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is surveying Martinu’s five piano concertos. The BBC’s Martinu symphonies website includes a picture gallery drawing on images from the recently reopened museum in Martinu’s birth town Policka.

Links:
> BBC Symphony Orchestra website
> Martinu website at boosey.com
> Introduction to Martinu’s music
> Martinu biography
> Martinu soundclips
> Martinu shop
> Martinu Foundation

> Further information on Work: Symphony No.6 (Fantaisies symphoniques)

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