Martinů: Opening of the Wells, Legend of the Smoke from Potato Fires, Mikeš of the Mountains

Album review

The three pastoral chamber cantatas here are apparently well known among Czech audiences, but for others they may well come as a delightful revelation. They are among the most "Czech" of Martinu's works, although they were written in the late '50s at the end of his life, when he was living in Switzerland. They may be regarded as a set, for all three are written to texts by Czech poet Miloslav Bures, and all are for the combination of a small chorus (all-female in the case of the first cantata, The Opening of the Wells) and a chamber group. The Opening of the Wells and the final Mikes of the Mountains employ a piano quartet, but the delightful middle work, The Legend of the Smoke from Potato Fires, features the unusual grouping of flute, clarinet, horn, accordion, and piano. The booklet tells you nothing about the origin of the story depicted in this charming work, the only one of the three cantatas with a religious theme, although it is really more of a Mother's Day theme and would make an ideal presentation for that time of year for a choir that had access to a Czech language coach. It involves Mary's descent to earth to learn of the hard life of humans; she goes unrecognized except by a group of young goat herders, who say, "She was wiping sweat off her brow, as if she'd been with us for ages; each of us saw in her a part of his own mum's image -- why, she had a son, too." The musical language of the three works is a perfect fusion of Martinu's neo-classic style with the magical realism of Czech Romanticism, and The Opening of the Wells, based on a Czech folk legend explained at slightly greater length, sets recited passages against solos and the female chorus to beautiful effect. The musicians and the Kühn Mixed Choir under director Pavel Kühn never lose touch with the lightness of the music. These cantatas emerge as major "late works," full of a spirit of renewal and worthy of programming along with late Beethoven, Bach, Liszt, and so on. The brief notes, as well as all the cantata texts, are given in Czech, English, German, and French.
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