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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Bohuslav Martinů: Complete Duos and Trios for Strings
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
350 033
Includes unlimited streaming of Bohuslav Martinů: Complete Duos and Trios for Strings
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Bohuslav Martinů left a flowering of seemingly unpretentious chamber works, full of transparency and light, whose induced messages allow themselves to be understood only after long familiarity with his method of communication. In the Paris of the 1920s, he was writing in the space of few days for Stanislav Novák and Maurits Frank the Duo No. 1 they play on 9 December 1925. This short diptych, characteristic of his jazzy ‘Parisian’ style, juxtaposes a Praeludium, worthy of the Bach of the Partitas, and a polytonal, syncopated Rondo, an exuberant, virtuoso stroll through the Paris of Cocteau. The String Trio No. 2 is dedicated to the Pasquier Trio (Concerts du Triton, 6 December 1935). Each movement has recitatives in the form of cadenzas, close to virtuoso improvisation and inherited from Roussel. In the Three Madrigals, Martinů, now in USA, attained the universal with this art of the instrumental madrigal which draws its sources from Elizabethan viol music while at the same time subliming two masterpieces of Mozart, the Duos K. 423/4. They are dedicated to the American duo of Lillian and Joseph Fuchs who gave the first performance on 22 December 1947 in New York. This team gives also the premiere, 5 January 1951, of the Duo No. 2 H. 331, appearing less radiant or even austere. In 1958, Martinů was again a guest of Paul Sacher in Switzerland and wrote the Duo No. 2 H. 371 violincello, pre-Classical in outline, respecting a broadened period key of D. In its short fast-slow-fast movements, it favours an almost plastic beauty of polyphony in external Allegros, the atmosphere of a sentimental stroll, not without nostalgia and close to decanted ‘dumka’ in the central Adagio. In March 1959, he was writing a short didactic poco allegro pour two cellos, 34 bars for the instrumental class of Suzanne Hitzel.
Awards: Choc by Le Monde de la Musique, 5 by Diapason, Recommended by Répertoire, Recommended by Classica
“The three excellent Czech musicians demonstrate admirable technical perfection and rare stylistic mastery in a veritable re-creation of this music, from the short diptych of the Duo No. 1, openly jazzy and atonal, up to the pre-Classical polyphony and plastic beauty of the Duo No. 2, both for violin and cello, […] by way of the harmonic richness and splendid sonorities of the Madrigals for violin and viola… The writing allows Pavel Hůla and Josef Klusoñ to shine, according to the stylistic and purely instrumental difficulties. Although Pavel Hůla and Michal Kaňka do not exaggerate the serious nature that underlies the Duo H. 371, the particularly colourful interpretation of the Trio ideally brings out what is most interesting in this score: its formal freeness, which heralds Martinů’s later ‘fantasy’ style.” (Le Monde de la Musique, July 2001)
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