Bohuslav Martinů

Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) was one of the most prolific and individual Czech composers of the twentieth century. Born in the small Bohemian town of Polička, where his family lived for years in a room atop a church tower (his father was the church sexton and town fire-watchman), he went on to a cosmopolitan career far from home, spending the 1920s and 30s in Paris (where he absorbed neoclassicism, jazz and the influence of Stravinsky and Roussel) before fleeing the war to the United States. Astonishingly productive, he left six symphonies, fifteen operas, numerous ballets and a vast body of concertos and chamber music. His mature style fuses a Czech lyrical warmth and folk feeling with a busy, motoric neoclassical energy and a distinctive shimmering, syncopated orchestral sound, instantly recognisable once you know it.