Martinů: Magical and Mysterious

THE PORTRAIT OF BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ that emerged during a day of Martinů-related events at Bard College was uniquely unusual. He was a Czech-born composer who spent more time in France and America than in his native country. He lived from 1890 to 1959, thus placing his productive years in the midst of a time of great musical unrest. Yet he remained apart from it, absorbing much and transmuting it into a variety of forms. The portrait, therefore, eludes canvas and words: his music is the portrait.

“Martinů and His World” is the title of Bard’s 35th annual music festival. Each of the festivals has been dedicated to examining a composer not only through significant and lesser-known works but also alongside works by others of influence. I attended the three events presented on Saturday, August 9, 2025.

To truly explore the breadth of Martinů’s influences probably would demand many weeks of effort. As scholar-in-residence Michael Beckerman wrote, “Martinů provides us with an almost inexhaustible collection of works, approaches, and ideas. His fascinations, with such things as madrigals, Stravinsky, the Virgin Mary, jazz, Baroque music, Bartók, surrealism, neoclassicism, Byzantine chant, medieval miracle plays, and the folk cultures of Czechoslovakia, give his works shadings both subtle and powerful.” 

Longtime NYU prof Beckerman is about to become dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. A Czech-music specialist, he also was scholar-in-residence for Bard’s festivals centering on Dvořák (1993) and Janáček (2003).

Martinů’s Symphony No. 6, which premiered in 1955, was commissioned by the Boston Symphony for its 75th anniversary, conducted by Charles Munch, whom Martinů admired. It was the concluding piece work on the evening concert of August 9, a concert that also included music by Erwin Schulhoff and Rudolf Firkušný. Martinů described his final symphony as “a work without form. And yet something holds it together, I don’t know what, but it has a single line, and I have expressed something in it.” 

It’s a three-movement work, about a half-hour long, that begins with an ominous susurrus of solo strings and flute over a low trombone stutter, soon sharing the jittery sound with clarinet and a trio of bassoons. It’s a movement of moods, each a little reluctant to yield to the next, but soon enough a chorus of winds ushers in a contrasting thought, soon accompanied by hazy triplets that dance throughout the ensemble. A pair of oboes leads us to yet another texture change, soon sounding a bit Brucknerian. And therein lies the key to this piece. The rhythmic figures that drive it are deliberately plangent, insisting that we hear them for mood, not melody. The more melodic figures also wrestle against tonality without completely surrendering, so there are pleasant tunes to take away but they’re contextualized by texture.

The second movement, marked Poco allegro, is in 6/8, and whether you count it in three or count it in two, you’re escorted by the indeterminate sounds of tremolos and trills. Chorales are sounded, there’s a hint of a cavalry charge, but at the edge of laughter comes a kind of hymn. Take it as it comes. Suspend the search for melody and form, and let it wash over you. As the third movement (Lento) takes over, enjoy the suggestion of a tune that’s just out of reach. Martinů wields the orchestra with assurance, swelling into grandeur, calming it into ragged peace, finishing the symphony with a grand Allegro vivace (in 2) that surprisingly eases back into Lento (in 4) and a gentle hymn.

Drawing by Bohuslav Martinů

“You can’t assign him to a school of music,” Beckerman said earlier in the day. “He’s a kaleidoscope. There’s a type of opera called špalíček, which refers to chapbooks from the Renaissance, each of which contained a collection of unlike things.” About the listening experience, Beckerman noted, “He believed in a cooperative relationship between audience and composer. The artist should not be leading the audience by the nose; the artist puts things there and the audience puts it together.”

We hear this in an early work performed earlier in the day: Martinů’s String Trio No. 1, from 1923, written in Paris under the influence of his mentor, Roussel. Three instruments require a more intimate canvas, but already there’s a Martinů storminess in evidence as some engaging lyricism struggles to escape. In the last movement, a Czech flavor simmers throughout as the violin enjoys a folklike dance over pizzicato beats. The performing ensemble comprised violinist Luosha Fang, violist Jason Mellow, and cellist James Kim.

Kim opened the afternoon program with the engaging trifle “Alla Polka” by Jaroslav Řidký, a harpist who taught at the Prague Conservatory while Martinů was in attendance. Martinů had a similar piece on the program: “Foxtrot,” from 1920, played by pianist Michael Stephen Brown. It’s a delightful intrusion into the realm of popular song, in the manner of Antheil and Stravinsky of this period. 

Two other Martinů pieces figured on the following day’s program. “Memorial to Lidice” is a somber nod to a city that Hitler ordered completely destroyed in 1942 in response to the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. A new city was built near the site, but the devastation’s memory will never go away. (Will we be able to stop our modern Hitler from similar action?) 

This 1943 work contains a deliberate resonance with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as a hint of possible triumph is deployed in the midst of a richly barren musical landscape. I was expecting another “Adagio for Strings,” but there’s no heart-on-the-sleeve limpidness here. A big percussion start featuring cymbals and concert bass drum gives way to a somber brass chorale before revealing a succession of chords for strings and winds. The work throbs with a shimmer of anxiety, compelling in its contrasts. There shouldn’t be applause after this piece, but such silence would be a concert-hall luxury.

Martinů wrote his Piano Concerto No. 4 for his good friend Rudolf Firkušný (the latter also a supporter of this festival in its early years). The two met in Paris, and Firkušný championed the composer’s works; his recordings of the Concertos 2, 3 (also written for the pianist), and 4 are considered benchmarks.

The Piano Concerto No. 4, from 1956, offers another trip into Martinů’s mysterious soundworld, as we would also hear in the Symphony No. 6. Titled “Incantation,” it’s a two-movement work that seems like a seamless whole even while being characteristically episodic. The piano (here played effortlessly by Jeonghwan Kim) isn’t in dialogue with the orchestra as much as it is in dialogue with aspects of the orchestra – moods and sounds and featured sections. 

It had a charming pairing on the program with Firkušný’s own Concertino, from 1929, a student work posthumously discovered among his papers and here getting its third-ever performance. With the ebullient Piers Lane as soloist, a portentous opening ushered in some very busy passagework with the flavor of Liszt. And there’s a sense of Liszt’s Concerto No. 2 in the sectional but continuous nature of the charming piece.

A Bard Summerscape Festival is all about context, and the adjacent works are chosen to illustrate a particular theme or era. The afternoon’s chamber works, all pointing to Paris, included 
Martinů’s 1945 Flute Sonata which, no surprise, shifted in mood from lyrical to energetic to mysterious, all beautifully played by Brandon Patrick George, again with Driver at the piano.
We also heard  the whimsical Bassoon Sonatine by Alexandre Tansman played by Thomas English and Danny Driver; the song Jazz dans la nuit, Op. 38 by Roussel, setting a surrealist poem by René Dommange and sung by mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven with pianist Erika Switzer piano; and Ravel’s Violin Sonata, which makes no secret of its jazz influence with a movement marked “Blues: Moderato” and an audience-grabbing perpetuum mobile finish (nice work by violinist Grace Park and pianist Michael Stephen Brown). 

Josef Suk’s Piano Quartet in A Minor, Op. 1 closed the chamber-music program with a big dose of Romantic tradition, post-Dvořák. The three-movement work was melodic and stirring, well-placed in the able hands of violinist Luosha Fang, violist Jason Mellow, cellist James Kim, and pianist Michael Stephen Brown.

The evening’s orchestral program opened with Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff’s Symphony No. 2, written in 1932. As Christopher Gibbs explained in the pre-lecture talk, Schulhoff was a committed Communist, and wanted his music to be appreciated by everybody. The symphony proved to be a warmly accessible work, with a nod to jazz in its Scherzo and the inclusion of alto sax and banjo in the ensemble.

The orchestra, known as The Orchestra Now (or, more handily, TŌN), is a student group under the baton of Bard president and general factotum Leon Botstein. The talent is high, but it’s not a finished ensemble. Strings lack the unanimity of a well-rehearsed group, and some brass players missed their targets from time to time. Of course, this was one of the most-challenging programs I’ve seen the orchestra play.

A number of Martinů’s more ear-grabbing pieces were scattered on other programs throughout the festival. Opening night offered his Fantasia (1944), for piano quintet, oboe, and theramin. His Czech-flavored String Quartet No. 7 was featured the following Sunday, alongside his 1947 oboe quartet and the absolutely delightful Nonet, written in 1959, the last year of his life.

Going forward in the festival “La revue de cuisine” is probably Martinů’s jazziest piece, and dates from 1927. Scored for a sextet, it was paired with the sextet by Aaron Copland. 

Orchestral works by Martinů included Tre ricercari (1938), the Violin Concerto No. 2 (1943), a Double Concerto from 1938, and his Symphony No. 2 (1943). 

Had I been available the second weekend, I would have made sure to see the concert performance “Juliette,” Martinů’s best-known opera. Other vocal works included his anti-Nazi Field Mass (1939), his anti-dictatorship set “From Brigand Songs” (1957), and his 1955 setting of “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”

The Bard Music Festival returns for its 36th season next August with an exploration of Mozart and His World.