Bard Music Festival | Program One | A Career Beyond Borders

Although none of the featured works were composed in his homeland, all testify to its profound spiritual importance to him. Set to Czech folk texts, the nostalgic song cycle Petrklíč / Primrose draws on the modes and rhythms of Moravian dance. Czech folk influences likewise color the Fantasia, in which oboe and theremin function as dueling soloists, illustrating Martinů’s creative approach to timbre. Commissioned for The Cleveland Orchestra to celebrate Czechoslovakia’s 25th anniversary, his Second Symphony uses Czech motifs to achieve its pastoral lyricism. By contrast, the contemporaneous First Piano Quartet evokes the drama and turbulence of its wartime creation, and the Double Concerto for string orchestras, piano, and timpani, completed on the day of the Munich Agreement, seems to capture the tension of impending war. A concerto grosso whose dark-hued final movement concludes with an unresolved dissonance, this powerful work is one of the composer’s crowning achievements.