Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)
Petites chansons sur une page, H 294
Petites chansons sur deux pages, H 302
Trente chants populaires slovaques, H 126
"Nouvelle Année tchèque", huit mélodies sur des textes populaires moraves, H 288

Martina Jankova, soprano
Tomas Kral, baryton
Ivo Kahanek, piano

Se souvenir du pays natal, quel meilleur moyen que la musique pour y parvenir ? En exil, Bohuslav Martinu recompose dans un folklore largement imaginaire les paysages de sa Moravie, alors qu’il aura arpenté la Slovaquie pour recueillir quelques chants des campagnes en 1920 : absolument pas des transcriptions comme le fit Bartók avec ses cylindres, mais des recréations merveilleuses d’imagination, de fantaisie. Tous les autres opus seront nés de l’autre coté de l’atlantique, dans cette Amérique qui avait déjà accueilli Dvorak, recueil d’une nostalgie encore émerveillée où gars et filles se comptent fleurette ou se chamaillent avant de laisser les paysages les envelopper. Merveille des merveilles, le Nouveau Spalicek de 1942 referme ce disque infiniment précieux qui a trouvé dans le timbre de fruit mur de Martina Jankova et dans le baryton humble de Tomas Kral deux poètes guidés par le clavier melliflu d’Ivo Kahanek qui fait danser les mazurkas et arpente les sentiers, invitant dans certaines mélodie la jeune fille et le tendre garçon à dialoguer. Impossible de cesser d’écouter ce paradis. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)

Folk songs are evidently one of the seminal sources of inspiration that Bohuslav Martinu drew upon in his music. The composer would take Sušil’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 Martinu 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 Martinu 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 Martinu’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 Martinu’s work alike, have made a benchmark recording, in which they have succeeded in highlighting the songs’ tender beauty.