The programme of this concert by the mezzo-soprano Jana Hrochová and the pianist Giorgio Koukl is based on their collaboration on a recent recording of Bohuslav Martinů’s complete songs, published on five CDs on the Naxos label. Some of these songs were discovered thanks to Koukl’s research efforts, and recorded for the first time. Their recital in Besední dům will be followed by a ‘marathon’ of Martinů’s songs in the villas of Brno, performed by other singers on 5 October 2019 – their programmes are also drawn from the pieces on these recordings.
A Parisian boulevard in late spring, tables at the Cafè du Dome, the commonplace, almost ritual meeting of colleagues, someone with a new girlfriend, Bohuslav Martinů with Charlotte, Alexander Tcherepnin with his wife, the pianist Lee Hsien Ming, Alexandre Tansman and Tibor Harsányi on their own, Conrad Beck and Georges Auric in the background – this is a photo that captures the atmosphere of a unique and irreplaceable era for music in Paris between the two world wars (see p. XX). As Harsányi described it in an interview for the magazine Le Guide du concert: “In this city, covering no more than a few dozen square kilometres, more music has been written than in the rest of the world.” It was in this atmosphere that works such as Martinů’s Juliette, Harsányi’s Histoire de petit tailleur and Honegger’s Pacific 231 were created.
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) wrote his Eight preludes for piano for Miss Charlotte Quennehen, endowing each of the pieces with the qualification “en forme de…”, in order to emphasise their stylistic uniqueness. These were very advanced, polytonal structures; the shy lad from Polička, who evidently sought to amaze his new girlfriend, was now far away from the world where he first searched for his own compositional path.
Giorgio Koukl, translated by Štěpán Kaňa
