Martinu: Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
$9.99
(COMPACT DISC)
In Stock - Usually ships within 24 hours.
Just copy this code and paste it where you want the link on your website:
Bohuslav MartinÛ (1890-1959) Songs Although known for a number of significant choral works, not least his summative 1954 oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh...
Bohuslav MartinÛ (1890-1959)
Songs
Although known for a number of significant choral
works, not least his summative 1954 oratorio The Epic
of Gilgamesh [Naxos 8.555138], attention is rarely
given to the vocal music of Bohuslav MartinÛ.
Nevertheless songs with piano actually comprise a fair
proportion of his output until 1930, with many of them
still unpublished, or only recently made available in
print, and covering the range of styles and genres in
which MartinÛ worked during that time. The present
disc, however, features a selection of his songs that were
written during the 1930s and early 1940s, a period in
which he moved away from an idiom heavily pervaded
by French influences towards one in which the folklore
of both his native Bohemia and further afield in Central
Europe played a significant rôle. Several of the
selections derive from two of his most important
stageworks from this period, and all of the songs either
anticipate or reflect the larger-scale pieces, whether
vocal or instrumental, on which MartinÛ was usually
engaged in what was one of the most productive phases
of his industrious composing career.
The Two Songs (1932) make a well-complemented
pairing: Peach Blossom treats Chan Yo Sun's poem
concerning the claustrophobic heaviness of summer,
encapsulated in the lengthy piano prelude, to an
elaborate setting which persuasively mingles
languidness with anxiety; Automne malade finds in
Guillaume Apollinaire's poetic yet equivocal evocation
of season's end a tender melancholy which touches on a
deeper pathos such as might have been inspired by
Ravel's celebrated Mallarme settings. Apollinaire,
specifically, his Alcools collection published in 1913, is
also the source of the song Saltimbanques from the
Three Melodies (1930), his picturesque evocation of
acrobats inspiring MartinÛ to a characterful setting in
lightly syncopated accents. Although it has a direct
precedent in Stravinsky's early Pastorale, Vocalise-
Etude, also written in 1930, is a fully characteristic
vocal piece, replete with the jazzy harmonies and
rhythmic gestures found in the music of MartinÛ's
Parisian years.
Very different are the Two Ballads (1932), which
draw on German folk sources. The Minstrels were
wondering is a variation on the archetypal tale of a
human spirit concealed within an inanimate object -
here, a maple tree - which tells of its sorrow to passing
musicians: MartinÛ's setting is thus thoughtful and
searching in expression, with an imposing piano part.
The Orphan is a typically 'grim' fairy-tale of loss and
brutality, to which the composer brings a plaintive
realism often redolent of JanaÇek, not least the subtly
attenuated piano writing, which fades away poignantly
at the close. Closely related in subject-matter, the Four
Songs to Folk Texts (1940) draw on an anthology by
Karel Erben, the nineteenth-century author and editor
whose writings inspired the sequence of symphonic
poems which Dvofiak wrote near the end of his career.
Of the texts selected by MartinÛ, Ponies on the Fallow
Field is a genial reflection on the true ownership of the
animals, while The Lost Slipper is a light-hearted skit on
an object of little consequence. Religious Song is a
simple strophic setting of tender devotion, then
Invitation imparts a wistful quality to the subjects of
absence and friendship.
Drawing on traditional Moravian texts, the cycle
Nov´y ·paliÇek (New Almanac, 1940) is among the most
personable of all MartinÛ's song collections. It opens
with the repartee of The Rich Sweetheart, in which 'He'
and 'She' confess their devotion in no uncertain terms,
and continues with the lovelorn sentiments of The
Abandoned Lover. Yearning is a lively consideration on
the attractions of fishing and star-gazing, then The
Inquisitive Girl is a poignant reflection on the
inevitability of death. The Happy Girl points the
difference between 'Sunday' and 'Saints-Day', while
The Mournful Lover focuses on the transience of love
and contentment in suitably melancholy terms. The
bittersweet Prayer is that of a girl in search of a suitor;
The High Tower a nonsense-song bringing the cycle to a
winsome end.
Coming either side of this cycle are two
transcriptions, both by the composer, of dances from the
opera-ballet ·paliÇek, figuratively speaking, a little book
of songs and tales, which MartinÛ composed in 1931-
32, and which had its première in Prague on 19th
September 1933. With a scenario that draws freely on
the painter Mikola% Ale%'s anthology of Czech fairytales,
songs and nursery rhymes, this is the most
immediately appealing of his numerous ballets,
witnessed by the heady Polka and insouciant Waltz,
both of which render the colourful orchestral originals
in highly pianistic terms.
The Three Songs for Christmastime (1929) are both
more extended settings of faux-naïf texts by French
authors. The Chicken sets Thierry de Gramont's verse
about a recalcitrant fowl in engagingly childlike terms,
as does The Little Cat with a verse attributed to Leon
Xanrof about a kitten forced to learn about life the hard
way. Meanwhile, the Four Children's Songs and
Nursery Rhymes (1932) are MartinÛ's first recourse to
Erben texts, in brief settings which range from the
jauntiness of The Counting Song, through the whimsy of
The Wild Dove and the charm of The Little Swallow, to
the teasing Children's Riddle. Slightly more substantial
are Love Carol (1937), which sets a folk text of typically
fanciful sentiments with an unfailing deftness, and A
Wish for a Mother (1939), in which Jiri Mucha's
thoughtful reflection on the passing of time and
increasing age is rendered in the straightforward but
affectionate terms of MartinÛ's maturity.
The final selections are drawn from The Miracles of
Mary, the cycle of folk-operas which MartinÛ composed
in 1933-4, and the première of which in Brno on 23rd
February 1935 was one of his greatest successes in his
home country. Christ's Nativity comes from the third
opera, derived from Moravian folk poetry, and is a
mellifluous pastorale on the birth of Christ. Sister
Pascalina, after the nineteenth-century Czech
playwright Julius Zeyer, is taken from the fourth and
last opera, a near-to-death meditation of such artlessness
and fervency as are hallmarks of MartinÛ's finest work,
the songs not excepted.
Richard Whitehouse
2 Songs, H. 213b (more info)
-
Kvet broskvi (Peach Blossom) (text: Chan Yo Sun) - 4:06
-
Automne malade (Sickly Autumn) (text: G. Apollinaire) - 3:13
3 Songs to poems by G. Apollinaire, H. 197 (more info)
-
3 Songs to poems by G. Apollinaire, H. 197: Saltimbanques (Acrobats) - 0:53
Vocalise-Etude, H. 188 (more info)
-
Vocalise-Etude, H. 188 - 1:10
2 Ballads to Folk Texts, H. 228 (more info)
-
Putovali hudci (The Minstrels were Wandering) - 2:53
-
Sirota (The Orphan) - 3:38
4 Songs, H. 282b (more info)
-
Konicky na ouhore (Ponies on the Fallow Field) - 1:09
-
Ztraceny pantoflicek (The Lost Slipper) - 0:43
-
Pisen nabozna (Religious Song) - 2:36
-
Pozvani (Invitation) - 1:12
2 Dances from Spalicek, H. 214c (more info)
-
2 Dances from the ballet Spalicek, H. 214c: II. Polka - 2:13
-
2 Dances from the ballet Spalicek, H. 214c: I. Waltz - 6:05
Novy spalicek (New Chap-Book), H. 288 (more info)
-
Bohata mila (The Rich Sweetheart) - 1:14
-
Opusteny mily (The Abandoned Lover) - 1:31
-
Touha (Yearning) - 0:58
-
Zvedave dievca (The Inquisitive Girl) - 1:10
-
Vesele dievca (The Happy Girl) - 0:26
-
Smutny mily (The Mournful Lover) - 2:58
-
Prosba (Prayer) - 1:32
-
Vysoka veza (The High Tower) - 1:07
3 Christmas Songs, H. 184b (more info)
-
Le poulet (The Chicken) (text: T. de Gramont) - 1:02
-
Le petit chat (The Little Cat) (text: attrib. L. Xanrof) - 1:45
4 Children's Songs and Nursery Rhymes, H. 225 (more info)
-
Pocitadlo (Counting Song) - 0:19
-
Divoky holub (The Wild Dove) - 0:23
-
Vlastovicka (The Little Swallow) - 0:16
-
Detska hadanka (Children's Riddle) - 0:19
Koleda milostna (Love Carol), H. 259 (more info)
-
Koleda milostna (Love Carol), H. 259 - 0:53
Prani mamince (A Wish for a Mother), H. 279b (more info)
-
Prani mamince (A Wish for a Mother), H. 279b - 1:16
Hry o Marii (The Plays of Mary), H. 236: Narozeni Pane (Christ's Nativity) (more info)
-
The Miracles of Mary, H. 236: Narozeni Pane (Christ's Nativity) (arr. for voice and piano) - 1:57
-
The Miracles of Mary, H. 236: Sestra Paskalina (Sister Pascalina) (arr. for voice and piano) - 4:45