Bohuslav Martinů composed pieces for large orchestra throughout all his creative periods. Symphonic music attracted him from the very beginning, yet he only began attaching greater importance to it after arriving in Paris in 1923. At the end of the following year, Václav Talich conducted in Prague the premiere of the football-inspired Half-time, H 142, the first of a trilogy of one-movement orchestral pieces dating from the 1920s which further opened for Martinů the door to the musical world. Two years later, he created La Bagarre, H 155, which in November 1927 was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky.
The great success La Bagarre garnered in Boston and subsequently other (not only American) cities encouraged Martinů to try his hand at a larger form. To mark the tenth anniversary of the handing over of the flag to the 1st Czechoslovak regiment in Darney, France, which ushered in the recognition of an independent Czechoslovak state, he decided to compose a symphony of a military nature. He stopped midway through, yet the failed attempt at creating his first symphony resulted in the original one-movement symphonic allegro La Symphonie, which on 14 December 1928 was first performed under this title by Serge Koussevitzky in Boston. At the time, Martinů highly rated this new composition and had no hesitation in branding it “one of my best pieces”. In the following years, the work met with enthusiastic responses; in 1929 it even won second prize in the Bedřich Smetana Jubilee Foundation competition in Brno. After its Prague premiere on 12 March 1930, conducted by Ernest Ansermet, Martinů decided to change the composition’s name, most likely because neither its form nor its nature matched the weightiness of a symphony. A Paris audience heard it in April 1930 performed by Walter Straram and his orchestra under the title Allegro symphonique, and later on in the same year Martinů chose the definitive name Rhapsody, notwithstanding that in his autobiography at the beginning of the 1940s he still referred to the work as the Symphonie militaire.
The Rhapsody symbolises one of the turning points in Martinů’s career. This piece rounds off the Paris “dynamism phase”, as the composer himself termed it. Until 1942, when he wrote his first symphony, he only returned to large orchestra in the case of Inventions, H 234, the opera Juliette, H 253, and a new version of the ballet Špalíček, H 214 II. The Rhapsody relates to Half-time and La Bagarre in its inspiration by the crowd and the copious application of brass instruments, while, on the other hand, it ushers in Martinů’s next creative phase. The Rhapsody is made up of three parts, with the melodious and modestly scored central Andante starkly contrasting with the stormy introductory Allegro and its reinforced repetition. The work is characterised by a distinctive harmony and heterophony with semitonal friction – one of the main traits of Martinů’s singular style in the 1930s. Lyricism and clear-cut rhythmic elements come to the fore, with a polyphonic component audible too. In addition, the concertante nature of the instrumental groups documents Martinů’s growing interest in the concerto grosso principle. Despite its undeniable originality, freshness and forcefulness, the Rhapsody’s initial success soon waned, so the currently rather neglected piece still awaits “rediscovery”.
Marek Pechač, Martinů Revue, 1/2012