BBCSO, Bĕlohlávek, Barbican Hall

Third instalment in Martinů cycle dazzles and disturbs

by David NiceSaturday, 20 February 2010

Martinů in New York: master symphonist in exileBohuslav Martinů Archive, Polička

Nothing stays the same for long in the hypersensitive symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů. A pastoral idyll accelerates to fairground mania before dropping off the merry-go-round, rapture fades in a single bar and victory may be snatched out of the jaws of brutal conflict at the very last second. The Czech exile's rich, compressed works of the 1940s, when he was living in New York and pining for the European scene he loved so dearly, are winning new admirers. A packed Barbican audience for the third in his ideal interpreter Jiři Bĕlohlávek's symphonic cycle with the BBC Symphony Orchestra enthusiastically demonstrated the phenomenon.

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