Frank Martin
Martin's long, quietly productive career reflected a quest to reconcile creative imperatives with stylistic integrity in an era of unprecedented technical challenges, experiments, and fragmentation. A conventionally trained musician would have been less liable to brook such challenges as an ethical dilemma or to see in them an almost paralyzing array of possibilities, while Martin, the tenth child of a Calvinist pastor, felt both keenly. Martin began composing at 8, was overwhelmed by a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion at 10, and by his 16th year knew that music was his destiny. While formally studying mathematics and physics at his parents' behest, he pursued music privately with the distinguished Swiss composer Joseph Lauber, who introduced him to the rudiments of piano, harmony, and composition. Martin became an able interpreter at the piano and harpsichord and, in later life, proved well enough equipped to make a definitive recording of his difficult Preludes (8) for piano. In 1918 Martin moved to Zurich, then on to Rome and Paris, returning to Geneva in 1926 with the experience of jazz hot in the ear. A meeting that year with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, founder of eurhythmics, went hand-in-hand with exploration of Hindu and Bulgarian rhythms, issuing in the orchestral triptych Rhythmes (1926) an element of rhythmic nervosité as a persistent feature of his music. Modal and serial elements also informed his work without being slavishly adopted. That the fairly prolific Martin achieved his first characteristic work -- the secular oratorio Le vin herbé (1938-1941) -- only as he passed his 50th year owes as much, perhaps, to the German-dominated insularity of Swiss musical life as to the search for an ideal purity of utterance. The impact of Debussy and Ravel, for instance, was brought to bear only during the Great War through the revelations of Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet, who performed Martin's Les dithyrambes in 1918 and became a champion of his work, making several classic recordings of it. Recognition came in the form of teaching posts, directorship of the Technicum Moderne de Musique, president of the Swiss Musicians' Union 1943-1946, a composition class at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik 1950-1957, and commissions (e.g., by Geneva Radio for the oratorio In terra pax for broadcast on armistice day). In 1943 he married his third wife, Maria Boeke, and in 1946 moved with her to Amsterdam, and later to Naarden. Masterworks flowed from his pen between concert tours that carried his music worldwide.
© TiVo
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Frank Martin : Le conte de Cendrillon (Das Märchen vom Aschenbrödel). Première mondiale
Classical - Released by Claves Records on 28 Jan 2013
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Martin: Harpsichord Concerto
Christiane Jaccottet, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Frank Martin
Concertos - Released by Vox on 28 Apr 2023
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Martin: Ballade for Piano & Orchestra
Sebastian Benda, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Frank Martin
Concertos - Released by Vox on 7 Apr 2023
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Polyptyque – Pavane couleur du temps – Petite Symphonie Concertante
Zbigniew Czapczynski, Chantal Mathieu, Verena Graf
Classical - Released by VDE-GALLO on 16 Feb 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Petite symphonie Concertante - Six Monologues from Everyman - Concerto pour sept instruments à vents
Ernest Ansermet, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Armin Jordan
Classical - Released by Cascavelle on 24 Jul 2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
messe pour double choeur
Classical - Released by Soundset on 1 Jan 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Martin: Concerto for 7 Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion and Strings - Petite Symphonie Concertante - Ballade for Flute, Strings and Piano
Philharmonia Virtuosi, Richard Kapp, Elizabeth Brown
Classical - Released by Intermusic S.A. on 10 Aug 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Jablonski: Peter & Patrik Two Pianos
Peter Jablonski, Patrik Jablonski
Classical - Released by Altara on 1 Jan 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin dirige Frank Martin: Concerto pour violon & Concerto pour piano No. 2
Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Paul Badura-Skoda, Frank Martin
Classical - Released by Jecklin on 1 Jan 1989
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Heinz Rehfuss - The Decca Recitals
Heinz Rehfuss, Hans Willi Hausslein, Frank Martin
Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released by Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd. on 1 Jun 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Missa
Kammerchor der Frauenkirche, Matthias Grünert, Percy Eastman Fletcher, Frank Martin
Classical - Released by Rondeau Production on 9 Oct 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Etudes - Clair de lune - Quatre sonnets à Cassandre - Esquisse - Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises - Ballade - Ouverture et foxtrot
Classical - Released by VDE-GALLO on 5 Nov 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra - Malcolm Arnold: Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra, Op. 77
The Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester
Classical - Released by First Edition on 21 May 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin and the Saxophone
Classical - Released by Ottavo on 13 Feb 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra - Ernest Bloch: Proclamation for Trumpet and Orchestra - Toshiro Mayuzumi: Pieces for Prepared Piano and Strings
The Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney
Classical - Released by First Edition on 7 May 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frank Martin: Complete Piano Solo Works
Classical - Released by VDE-GALLO on 10 Mar 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Martin: Ballade
Frank Martin, David Bruchez, Ariane Haering
Classical - Released by EUROPEAN GRAMOPHONE on 27 Feb 2024
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Oma, ich fahr schon mal den Rollstuhl vor! - Als ich vom Enkel zum Pfleger wurde (Ungekürzte Autorenlesung)
Humour/Spoken Word - Released by Argon Verlag on 1 Sep 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Récital de lieder
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Claves Records on 1 Jan 1993
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Es kommt, wie's kommt
Musical Theatre - Released by Südpolentertainment on 15 Mar 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Shostakovich, Kokkonen, Martin, Schoeck: Meister des XX. Jahrhunderts
Classical - Released by VDE-GALLO on 16 Feb 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo