Written at the height of the composer's powers and at a time of great optimism on his part, this vigorous piano quintet is one of the most joyful of the great examples of the genre. The farther Bohuslav Martinu (1890—1959) got from Europe, the more firmly he moved into the great line of Czech composers that runs to him through Janácek and Dvorák from Smetana. He lived in France from 1923 to 1940, eventually discovering a distinctive neo-Baroque style using active, independent dissonant lines. He started evolving toward a more Romantic style, a process that accelerated after he fled France to escape the Gestapo and landed in the United States. There his style took a decisive change: in the year he wrote this quintet, he wrote that he discovered "The Czech part of myself that I had brought with me to France was not dissipated, rather on the contrary, it came to be still enhanced by a consciousness newly raised...." In America, he turned to the symphony for the first time and otherwise wrote other large-scale sonata works, turning them out at an astonishing rate. He wrote this quintet from February to April 1944, after the tide had turned in Russia, Africa, and Italy and Allied Forces would obviously soon be on the way to liberation. One aspect of Martinu's neo-Baroque style remained with him: his tendency to brisk, almost machine-like toccata rhythms in fast movements, along with active counterpoint. In addition, there is the consistent leaping quality to Martinu's rhythms and the texture of the work is unusual. The problem many composers have with the piano quintet genre is that the piano tends to separate itself from the strings. Rather than chamber music, it starts to turn into a concerto for piano versus a small string body, rather than a group of five players seemingly to be in musical conversation. But Martinu always had a distinctive approach toward using the piano in ensembles: it's almost always there, even in his orchestral works, shadowing the lines of the other instruments and creating the distinctive edge to the musical lines that makes Martinu so unmistakable. So in this work, the piano merges with the strings while creating the typical driving rhythms. The quintet is in four movements, lasting about half an hour. The movements are quite balanced in length, all from six and a half to just over eight minutes long. The opening, Poco Allegro, is a striving work with a sense of re-assurance and is almost entirely based on ascending scales. The slow movement, Adagio, does not have the typical drive, but does have Baroque-like ornamented melodies. The Scherzo—Poco Allegretto has a folk-like theme and an unusual slow trio section, the saddest music in the score. The Finale, Largo begins in a mood of calm, with the piano remaining silent. Rippling piano figures then propel it into a mood that recalls the happy chamber music finales of Johannes Brahms, and except for a brief coda, the quintet ends in luminous calm.

© All Music Guide