Martinu - Cello Concertino [Wallfisch/ Belohlavek-Czech Philharmonic]
Here's the first entry into my Blog for Martinu, a Composer i have somewhat of a hard time understanding his soundworld, and the way he layers his compositions, sometimes it's uneasy to follow his thread of ideas, the solution is to keep listening, delving deeper, and gaining a greater familiarity.
Raphael Wallfisch is English, now 58 years old, he has extensively recorded the Cello repertoire, he made this recording in 1991, the booklet front cover is laid out nicely [photography by Hanya Chlala].
The Cello Concertino on this disc lasts almost 14 minutes, it's a fairly short work, almost like a Cello Concerto movement, a strange brew of instruments, a slew of wind instruments, piano and percussion, no strings at all, and Martinu has to be at his most inventive without strings to base a nice melody on, and all of the instruments create a nice percussive intro [0:00-1:15], before the cello entry comes in [1:15+], the whole thing reminds me somewhat of Strauss's Don Quixote, about a third of the way through, the percussion has military drum rolls, while the woodwinds [sounds like clarinets and oboes] have quite a nice short piping tune going [4:14-4:41], this i suppose is not actually a Cello Concertino, but rather a Concertino, that has a fairly central place for the Cello, but unlike a normal Cello Concerto, there are fairly long moments where the cello doesn't feature, halfway through the cello has a wistful tune [7:20-8:04], right at the end there's a nice finale of sorts, a jolly tune where everyone contributes to a rousing recapitulation [13:14-13:48], very much a large chamber sounding piece rather than outright orchestral in nature, but it's a fun and interesting piece, well worth getting to know.
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