In the 1950s Martinu wrote four little cantatas that looked back to his earliest origins. Three of them are recorded here, and a touching group they make. The Opening of the Wells describes the annual ritual of cleaning the wells in spring so that pure water may flow again after the clogging mud of winter. The Legend of the Smoke from Potato Fires (as it is translated here) tells of the Virgin Mary descending from the altar and, while the pious and prosperous anxiously seek the missing image, moving about among the village folk so as to bear their burdens before she returns, a scarf replacing her halo. (Dandelion Romances, about a girl waiting for her soldier to return, is not here recorded.) Lastly, Mikes of the Mountains is about a goatherd who cunningly guides his flock so as to outwit the harshness of winter. The first uses a narrator; all have chorus, solo singers and a varied instrumental group. These sharp, bright sounds conjure up the folk music and the legends, tales and rituals of the country Bohemia in which Martinu grew up; and he was delighted when he heard, from America, that they had given pleasure to the ordinary people he describes. They pick up the quick rhythms of Bohemian folk music and the raw edge of folk bands, recreating in much simpler fashion the atmosphere that was invoked with genius by Stravinsky in The Wedding. They are touching, clever, and not in the least sentimental: Martinu was a countryman.
But it was the urban sophisticate who turned this sharp ear upon the music he heard in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s for the two ballets on the second record. Echec au Roi (1930) brings onto a single games board pieces from chess, dominoes and backgammon as well as playing cards. The libretto by Andre Coeuroy, a respected author and critic, allows Martinu plenty of scope for jazzy pastiche: there is a blues, plenty of jazz, quotations of fanfares, and an ouverture espagnole that is not so much a Spanish Overture as an allusion to the Ruy Lopez opening in chess. The Revolt (1925) is to a text by the composer. The revolt in question is by notes-black and white, high and low-which have been abused. The action is pretty surreal, and ends in a call for a general strike which brings out conservatories and instrument makers, drives critics to suicide and Stravinsky off to a Pacific island. There is plenty of occasion for pastiche again, pleasantly in a Night Club scene and a Music Hall foxtrot. Matters are returned to normal by Inspiration. It is all very smart.'