Martinu: The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon

Martinu’s piano oeuvre comprises more than 200 compositions (some of which were dedicated to the outstanding pianists R. Firkušný and R. Serkin) and has duly been paid great attention to.

• However, a number of fascinating miniatures have remained overlooked by performers, with some of them being presented for the very first time on this CD. The minor pieces, often arranged into tiny cycles, are most notable for their playful atmosphere and rhythmic inventiveness.

• The first cycle (Jeux I) from the composer’s mature Paris period reflects the huge popularity of jazz at the time, while in another cycle (Film en miniature) the author’s erstwhile enchantment with Impressionism is still evident.

• Martinu’s piano version of the jazz ballet The Kitchen Revue, which immediately after its premiere (1927) met with unprecedented acclaim, has been completely overlooked and hitherto unreleased. This composition too can be heard on our CD in premiere.

The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu was highly prolific, with over 400 works in many forms to his credit. In this second CD of his piano works, we have three sets of Puppets, written between 1912 and 1924. These and his Film in Miniature of 1925 reflect Martinu's fascination with popular culture.

The two sets of Garden Cycles from 1920 predate the composer's move to Paris. The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon is dedicated to Hsien-Ming Lee Tcherepnin, the Chinese-born pianist and that composer's wife, while Les Bouginistes is dedicated to his own wife Charlotte - both written in New York in 1948.

Martinu was an enormously prolific composer, who seemed often enough careless of the fate of what he had written. He tended to avoid revision of his work and in consequence the vast quantity of music he wrote is of uneven quality and varying style, although he came, in the 1930s, to make increasing use of Czech thematic material and to be identified with his native country, from which he remained an exile.