Working with the sometime polished and professional, but sometimes somewhat provincial
Bamberger Symphoniker,
Neeme Järvi turns in brightly colorful, brilliantly rhythmic, and formally cogent accounts of
Bohuslav Martinu's symphonies that set them squarely in the modernist tradition. Unfortunately, not much in
Järvi's readings bring out the distinctive personality of the works or the composer.
Martinu's characteristically luminous but pungent colors, effervescent but inexorable tempos, picaresque but persuasive forms are nearly ignored here, and instead other composers' characteristics are inserted. One hears all too clearly echoes of
Sibelius in the woodwind and brass writing,
Stravinsky in the percussion writing, and
Rachmaninov in the string writing, along with
Walton in the propulsive rhythms,
Prokofiev in the weighty textures, and
Shostakovich in the stern sonorities. But of
Martinu himself, the modernist master whose symphonies are indisputably among the finest of the past century, one finds little. Listeners would do better to get to know
Martinu's symphonies from the fine recordings by
Karel Ancerl,
Vaclav Neumann, and
Jirí Belohlávek. This Musical Heritage Society reissue is sonically indistinguishable from the original BIS issues; the digital sound is crisp and clean, though with no particular sense of time or place.