Word: martinu
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...Budapest Quartet. The small audience politely applauded the work of Boston-born Walter Piston (Quintet for Flute and Strings), Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland (Birthday Piece, On Cuban Themes For Two Pianos), French-born Darius Milhaud (string quartet), California-born Frederick Jacobi (songs about the prophet Nehemiah), Czech-born Bohuslav Martinu (Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano). Hit of the evening came at the program's close with Russian-born Louis Gruenberg's Variations on a Popular Theme. It nearly brought discreet cheers. Composer Gruenberg's theme was The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze...
Just as his bustling Concerto Grosso was about to be heard for the first time-in Vienna-the Nazis arrived. Then the same thing happened in Prague; then in Paris. Last week, at last, Bohuslav Martinu, Czech modernist composer, heard the much-applauded premiere of his concerto, played by Serge Koussevitzky and his Symphony-in Boston, before the Nazis arrived...
...been touring House Common-rooms for several weeks with its performances of chamber-music. Tuesday night at Leverett House it played a program very likely to be repeated at the Fogg Wednesday evening, which included an early Beethoven quartet, a Schumann quartet, and a quartet by the contemporary talent Martinu. This followed out their usual policy of playing at each concert one classical, one romantic, and one modern quartet. The players made sure to place their modern offering in the middle: doubtless they were afraid of shocking the audience with it in the beginning, or leaving too peculiar a taste...
...mine in high-school once had the habit of peppering his exampapers with little academic witticisms, (partly in order to raise his grade). He got one paper back totally uncorrected, except for the single terse remark: "Clover--but not true." This one phrase well strikes the effect of the Martinu quartet. It was dazzlingly clever. As far as I could see, it capitalized on every music sure-fire ever invented: catchy, inclusive rhythms, abrupt changes in tempo, wild polytonality, a string technique which graded off from whole pages of unbearably shrill violin-chatter at some times to a Brahmsian luxuriance...
...other hand, the Schumann A major quartet that the Stradivarius men played, did ring true. Not one of Schumann's greatest works, like all his work, it diffused a fresh lyrical charm which was a pleasure to listen to after the nervous pyrotechnics of the Martinu quartet...