Written in exile between 1942 and 1953, all but one of Bohuslav Martinů’s six symphonies were commissioned or premiered by US orchestras, yet each exudes the vigorous spirit of the composer’s Czechia homeland. Too often neglected, their first appearance on Deutsche Grammophon is a red-letter day for these distinctive, eminently likable works.
The Bamberg Symphony was founded in 1946 by musicians driven out of Bohemia and Moravia. The music is thus deeply embedded in their DNA and Jakub Hrůša knows just how to draw it out. Martinů’s idiosyncratic sound world incorporates orchestral piano and bristling percussion, while his neo-classical pastoralism is regularly subverted by a bustling rhythmic energy. Tempos accordingly are brisk but never rushed, while crisp, crunchy textures are clean and meticulously detailed.
The First Symphony’s sunny syncopations emerge from diaphanous billows of sound, contrasted with a funereal largo – keening strings over subterranean tolling piano – and a jaunty finale that ends in a rush of adrenaline. The lyrical, ultimately exuberant Second Symphony channels Dvořák, whose Requiem is quoted in the reflective finale of the otherwise troubled and turbulent Third.
The untrammelled waters of the ebullient Fourth are juxtaposed with the lucid, more measured Fifth. Premiered in Prague, the latter expresses the composer’s keen sense of nostalgia. The mercurial mysteries of the Sixth, subtitled Fantaisies symphoniques, conclude one of the 20th-century’s most original cycles.
Hrůša, whose astute theatrically trumps most of his competitors on disc, is a highly persuasive guide and his affectionate interpretations are presented in first-rate sound.
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