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The Bohuslav Martinů Foundation makes its debut in New York and brings the Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano home
“Martinů wrote this Sonatina in New York. Playing it here feels like bringing it home,” says Irvin Venyš.
The concert will highlight the significant role Martinů played in the musical life of the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. He arrived in New York in March 1941 following a dramatic escape from occupied France, and America became his home for several years. All six of his symphonies were composed here; he taught at Princeton University and at Mannes College of Music, and in 1952 he became an American citizen. Serge Koussevitzky played a pivotal role in his American career. He premiered Martinů’s Concerto grosso with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, invited him to teach at Tanglewood, and commissioned his First Symphony. Martinů thus soon became one of the most frequently performed composers in the country. He returned to New York in the mid-1950s, and it was during this period that he composed the Sonatina H 356, now an integral part of the clarinet repertoire. He left the United States for good with his wife Charlotte on 4 May 1956. The New York concert therefore also marks the seventieth anniversary of his departure.
The highlight of the programme is the panel discussion ‘Martinů in America’, which will present five life stories linked to Bohuslav Martinů, offering three American and two Czech perspectives on his work. It will be moderated by musicologist Christopher H. Gibbs, Professor of Music at Bard College. Speakers will include Michael Beckerman, Dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and one of America’s leading experts on Czech music, and conductor Leon Botstein, the long-standing President of Bard College. The Czech side will be represented by musicologist and composer Aleš Březina, director of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute, and composer and musicologist Vít Zouhar, chairman of the board of trustees of the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation and vice-dean of the Faculty of Education at Palacký University in Olomouc, who is editing the collection of Bohuslav Martinů’s correspondence.
“Martinů was not merely a guest in America, but one of its leading composers. His correspondence shows how strong his ties to this country remained right up until the end of his life. Even whilst still in Europe, he read The New York Times and had American music paper sent to him from New York, on which he wrote his scores. He also closely followed every American performance of his compositions,” says Vít Zouhar.
The Sonatina for Clarinet was composed as a gesture of friendship. In January 1956, Martinů offered two short compositions to the Parisian publisher Alphonse Leduc and intended to pass on the royalties to his friend and biographer Miloš Šafránek, who was facing financial difficulties at the time. „And of course I would write that for you, not for them,“ he wrote to him on 15 January. Two weeks later he added: „Well, these two compositions don’t give me much pleasure, [...] but the main thing is that it helps you.“ The second of the two compositions was the Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano. Both were published by Leduc in 1957.