Martinů: Three Cello Sonatas

Wallfisch, Raphael, York, John

NI 8105

The mid-20th century has a tragic and many faceted story to tell where musicians from Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are concerned. So many were either blacklisted, dismissed from their positions and forced into exile or transported to the camps and simply eliminated. Born in 1890 Polička, Bohemia, (now the Czech Republic) he was blown hither and yon by events beyond his control but he managed to stay just one step ahead of the invaders, seeking a place where he and his wife could live and work freely. But that did not prevent him from composing a vast and very successful amount of music in all genres, including an unusually large number of pieces for the cello.

The first cello sonata (1939) reflects the turbulence of the war’s early months. An unsettling, obsessively rhythmic opening paragraph in the piano launches a motoric, sometimes jagged, triple-time dance, hardly stopping for breath.

The harmonic language of the second cello sonata (1941) exploits and develops much of the astringent dissonance of the first sonata, there are also plenty of real ‘new world’ colours, melodies full of the open spaces of Martinů’s newly adopted country.

Now, jazzy harmonies and rhythms are much more complex and varied. Martinů’s later style has an attractive mix of pungent dissonance, motoric repetition, jazzy syncopation and some great tunes –and all these are in generous evidence in the third cello sonata (1952). It inhabits a more positive world than the first two, well suited to its recently deceased dedicatee, cellist Hans Kindler whose personality was, reportedly, inveterately and delightfully upbeat.

CD x 1

Nimbus

2/9/21

0710357810527