Martina Janková - Martinů: Songs (2019)

Folk songs are evidently one of the seminal sources of inspiration that Bohuslav Martin drew upon in his music. The composer would take Susil's extensive collection of traditional Moravian songs along with him wherever he travelled. The texts from the volume were used for the majority of the Songs on One Page, Songs on Two Pages and The New Chapbook. Just as Dvorák had done in his Moravian Duets, so Martin conceived his own tunes and accompaniment, yet his having been profoundly impacted by folk music, its rhythm, melody and harmonic techniques is palpable. Created in the early 1940s, in the middle of World War II, during the composer's exile in the USA, the three song cycles represented for Martin and his compatriots a connection with their beleaguered homeland. Jan Masaryk, a Czech diplomat and a skilled amateur pianist, often performed the songs together with the soprano Jarmila Novotná, a MET soloist. Owing to their elliptical expression and modesty, the three cycles may serve as the clue to Martin's late works. The New Slovak Songs constitute a unique piece in the composer's oeuvre; he himself had collected them during his visit to Slovakia in 1920 and subsequently wrote for them piano accompaniments.Three renowned artists, bearing an authentic relation to folk music and Martin's work alike, have made a benchmark recording, in which they have succeeded in highlighting the songs tender beauty.