Anniversaries seem to be cornerstones of concert programming these days and there is a plentiful supply of composers' birth and death days to keep concert managers busy during 2009. Next year sees major anniversaries for Handel, Purcell, Haydn and Mendelssohn, so let's hope that, in this abundance of celebrations, the 50th anniversary of Bohuslav Martinů's death doesn't get overlooked. If due tribute is paid to Martinů, we'll get a chance to hear some wonderful compositions that are not well known by large sections of the opera and concert-going public. The Czech composer was one of the most prolific of the mid twentieth century with nearly 400 works produced between the 20s and his premature death, at the age of 69, in 1959. There are six sparkling symphonies, a mass of chamber works including seven string quartets, five piano concertos and many assorted orchestral works.
Then there are the ballets, oratorios and operas. The best known of the dozen or so oratorios/cantatas are the quietly moving Field Mass and the strangely hypnotic Epic of Gilgamesh. In recent years, only one of the composer's 14 operas have been performed at a major London house – the last one, The Greek Passion, which was finally presented at Covent Garden in its original form in 2000, and again in 2004. It is 30 years since his early opera Julietta has been performed in the capital, although a concert performance is scheduled (the first of the anniversary tributes?) at the Barbican in March 2009.
Julietta and The Greek Passion both have their supporters among Martinů adherents as the composer's crowning masterpiece. The truth is that both have a claim to the description and any lover of his works wouldn't want to do without either. As with all his operas, the style and tone differ enormously – the one a surrealistic dream play, the other a deeply moving religious epic – but they both have Martinů's instantly recognisable sound, that of a composer identifiable within a bar or two of any of his works.
Subtitled "The Book of Dreams" or "The Key to Dreams", Julietta was written in 1937-8, at the end of the first phase of the composer's operatic output, while he was living in Paris. Nine of the 14 operas come from this period, and 15 years were to elapse before he went back to stageworks, with the remaining five operas, written between 1952 and his death seven years later.
"Do you believe your dreams are some kind of fantasy?" Dream Clerk, Julietta
The libretto of Julietta is based on a play by Georges Neveux and describes an Alice-like journey through a world of dreams, a domain without memories. The music is tremendously varied, ranging from the deeply romantic to the nightmarish and downright weird. It is an enchanting work, as compelling as the magical dream you don't want to leave when you wake up to find yourself facing the mundane reality of everyday existence.
Julietta was preceded by half a dozen operatic works, most of them of short duration; in fact, only five of the operas are full-length. Of those earliest forays into the art-form, the most engaging are The Voice of the Forest (1935) and Comedy on the Bridge (1935), both written as radio plays but also subject to frequent staging since the composer's death. The latter was given a lively performance by students of the Guildhall School a few years ago.
Based on a play by the 18th Century Czech playwright Klicpera, Comedy on the Bridge is a wonderfully dotty piece in which a disparate group of villagers find themselves trapped on the bridge that divides two warring communities. Alexandre Bis (1937), a Feydeau farce gone haywire, is also of just 40 minutes length, and is equally entertaining and tuneful.
"I've always dreamt of marrying a hanged man" Eleonora, Les larmes du couteau
Of the earliest operas, those written in the 20s, Les larmes du couteau (The Knife's Tears) has been most often performed, although its inscrutable Dadaist libretto is likely to be off-putting for some people. Musically, like much of his writing from that period, it owes a huge debt to Stravinsky and Les Six. Think The Soldier's Tale and Renard and you'll get a good idea of its sound world.
Most of Martinů's work flirts with the strange and off-kilter, delving into the subconscious in one way or another, and Les larmes is an extreme example of this exploration – a woman falls in love with a hanged man, Satan rides a bicycle and heads split apart, while legs and arms dance on their own.
The Miracle of Our Lady (1935-6) is a collection of four short operas - The Wise and Foolish Virgins, Mariken of Nimégue, The Nativity and Sister Pascaline - that show Martinů throwing off the French and jazz influences of his Paris years and veering towards the folk idioms of his native country. It's something of a rag-bag of cantata-like shorter pieces and medieval morality plays, with ballet interludes, bound together by some truly inspired music which foreshadows the religious content of his final opera.