Martinu: Violin Concertos Nos.1 & 2 / Stravinsky: Divertimento – Josef Spacek

“I’ll also be writing a violin concerto for an American, the same person Stravinsky wrote one for; that will be good advertising for me, but also a lot of work.” For Bohuslav Martinů, the violin was the instrument especially close to his heart, but it was also companion. He played in the Czech Philharmonic as a violinist, and it was the violin that took him to Paris, the city which enchanted him and become his home for 17 years before the war drove him to America. More than once, the violin was his introduction to the “high society” of the music world.

The American from the quoted letter was the star violinist Samuel Dushkin. The violinist praised the work and Martinů (“He really is a nice fellow. […] He has a very exceptional sense for the violin”), but he constantly demanded more and more changes to the concerto, and in the end the performance did not take place. The score was lost, then it was rediscovered and finally premiered in 1973 by Josef Suk with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Georg Solti. At the time when Martinů’s First Violin Concerto was being written, it was the same American Dushkin who was collaborating with Igor Stravinsky on a different work based on music from the neoclassical ballet The Fairy’s Kiss; together, they were creating a lovely suite titled Divertimento for violin and piano. In 1943, it was Mischa Elman, another star violinist, who commissioned Martinů’s Second Violin Concerto.

Elman also gave the concerto its world premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Serge Koussevitzky. With a new look at Martinů’s violin concertos, Josef Špaček and Petr Popelka are following up on their acclaimed album with Martinů’s Concerto for violin, piano, and orchestra (Supraphon 2023). Once again, they prove that there is always something to discover and to admire in the music of Bohuslav Martinů.