Two Songs (1910), H 21, are among the most ambitious of the composer's early works: Where Was I? (Kde jsem to byla?) is a lengthy meditation on the transience of life and love, such as Martinů sets with a portentousness and overt reliance on rhetoric that says much about his understanding of the text. By contrast, Why the Smile of Your Teeth? (Proč zoubky tvé tak smály se?) is a more compact and also cohesive setting of a poem which intriguingly compares the smile of the departed lover with the light that shines through the darkness as night gradually becomes day.
The recording of the composition was released for the first time by Naxos in 2014 (Martinů: Songs, Vol. 2 – The Months; Jana Wallingerová, Giorgio Koukl).
Richard Whitehouse, Martinů: Songs, Vol. 2 – The Months, Naxos 2014