Reckoned one of the world’s leading composers in the 1940s and ’50s, Bohuslav Martinů is no longer a frequent presence in our concert programs, still less our opera houses. Yet he was extremely prolific: he wrote about 400 works, including ten operas, six symphonies, many ballets, a wealth of chamber, vocal and instrumental music, and nearly 30 concertos of various kinds. More significantly, he achieved a unique synthesis of disparate elements: Baroque forms seen through 1920s Parisian neo-classicism, jazz, and the folk music of Bohemia and Moravia. He added to this a very personal sense of rhythm, an experimental attitude towards structure and new media, and a delight in instrumental colours that tends towards the luminous and fantastic. In Bohemia and Moravia he’s considered Czechoslovakia’s leading 20th-century composer, heir to the traditions of Dvorák and Suk – yet his music is also highly cosmopolitan.
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