Martinů's piano cycle Jeux (Games), H 206, designated as Book II, was composed in Paris in the spring of 1931. Earlier in the same year, he had written four untitled pieces for piano that have many elements in common with Jeux, and Harry Halbreich, the author of the standard catalog of Martinů's works, decided to call them Jeux, Book I with the catalog number H 205. This cycle, whose autograph is deposited in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague, has never been published. All four of its movements have a playful mood and show a typical alternation of measures with odd and even numbers of beats, which gives the music a special kind of rhythm. This together with fast tempos lends the first book a scherzo-like character. Similar in character is the second, six-movement series of Jeux, whose subtitle reads 'Six Simple Pieces for Piano'. This series, however, does not work with alternating meter and is built on tonality, on regular rhythms - at most syncopated and accented, as is so typical of Martinů - and more on motivic fragments than on fully-elaborated themes. It does not deny the influence of jazz, which was so popular in Paris at the time. The individual movements of this second cycle contrast with each other in tempo and dynamics, but all preserve their joking and playful character.
Lenka Foltýnová, programme of the Bohuslav Martinů Festival's concert, December 10, 2003