Supraphon have done well to keep so much of their finest
Martinu archive recordings in the catalogue. Of course they also have
blank spots. Some of the most unaccountable include the inexplicable
neglect of 1960s stereo tapes including Sasa Vectomov 's Martinu Cello
Concerto No. 2 and Martin Turnovsky's unequalled version of the luminous
Fourth Symphony not to mention Zdenek Hnat's late 1970s LP of the tension-filled
Toccata e Due Canzone. Josef Suk's Wartime Triptych was
brilliantly done by Alois Klima but this too lurks in the Supraphon
coffers shedding iron oxide particles and accruing print-through.
For years the present version
of the Sixth Symphony was the only
one available. It played catch as catch can
with another mono version in the 50s, 60s
and 70s. This was the Munch recording on RCA.
The work had of course been written for Munch
and the Boston orchestra. Regrettably the
Boston engineers captured a recording rather
lacking in lustre. The Ancerl always commanded
the high ground. Until the arrival of Dr Michael
Bialoguski's 1970s recording on Unicorn the
two had the field to themselves. Neumann's
undervalued cycle was issued on Supraphon
in the mid-1970s and is well worth reassessment.
As the 80s and 90s unrolled the options opened
up with cycles from Järvi (BIS), Thomson
(Chandos), Flor (RCA), Fagen (Naxos) amongst
others. Ancerl's while lacking the draw of
a modern recording sounds very well. The buzzing
energy and tension were recognised with the
award in 1960 Grand Prix du Disque de l'Académie
Charles Cros. The recording was made while
the composer was still alive as indeed was
the Bouquet. The symphony has a low
dramatic profile making its effect in delicacy
rather than drama. It seems to drift in fantastic
dream from warm insect clouded summer fields
to cradling marine-scapes which are more of
the Mediterranean than of the Cape Cod estate
on which he stayed in those days.
The Bouquet of Flowers is a cycle of
settings for solo voices, chorus and orchestra of texts by Karl Erben
whose grim tales fuelled The Spectre's Bride and the late tetralogy
of Dvorak tone poems which includes The Water Goblin. It is a
highly spiced setting, folk-naïf in the sung parts but sophisticated
in the orchestral role which includes a prominent part for the solo
piano. It is a full three-quarters of an hour in duration and is pleasing
but undemanding. One can imagine this as a sort of Czech analogue for
Vaughan Williams' First Nowell though without an orator. Martinu
wrote it in 1937 dedicating it to the painter Jan Zrzavy. It was premiered
on Prague Radio conducted by Otakar Jeremias. The composer never heard
the work in any other form than as a crackly radio relay. The cycle
is in two parts: six sections in Part I and two in Part II. The folk
texts are printed in full in the booklet alongside a parallel English
translation.
You might plausibly have expected that Martinu would
have attended the recording sessions or would have heard the recordings.
However the political conditions of the 1950s denied him even this.
Mono though hardly the deeply enriched signal captured
by the best contemporary engineers in the West. If you expect a sound
comparable with the Beulah Sibelius Collins series you are in for a
disappointment. Respectable sound but not outstanding and certainly
holding fascination.
Rob Barnett
Libuse
Domaninská (sop)
