Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) wrote the first of his three piano quintets (called the zero) during the holidays in 1911 in his native Polička. "Holidays" in his case should be understood only in terms of time: the twenty-one-year-old Martinů was not employed anywhere and did not study at any school – the year before he had been expelled from the Prague Conservatory for irremediable negligence, where he had been sent at the age of sixteen by his devoted fellow citizens from Polička to study to become a violin virtuoso. Nevertheless, his poor parents still allowed him to stay in Prague during the season and devote himself to self-education; the fanatically diligent Martinů thus fulfilled the essential need for freedom that had accompanied him all his life and forced him always to do something different from what his surroundings expected of him.
Many of his compositions from this period reflect both his efforts to navigate the fading and emerging stylistic currents of the early twentieth century and the convincing trace of an original talent that can articulate something new and unusual. The two movements of the piano quintet can be described as rhapsodic in the late-Romantic sense: the sonata-like development of the first movement, with its characteristic rhythm of the main theme (it also extends into the secondary theme), is interrupted in the course of the performance and continues with an adagio, seemingly as a new movement, bringing new expressive positions to the familiar thematic material – the sweet lyricism, the characteristic cello solo sul ponticello, the escalating passionate excitement, the dramatic break and the return of the opening allegro.
The quartet's introduction (without piano) to the second movement is full of romantic poignancy, which then spills over in numerous modulations from key to key, accompanied by the characteristic rhythm of the first movement; the major brightening in the reprise, bringing a kind of optimistic version of this music, is not definitive - the conclusion is marked by the dark fatality of the string unison.
Jiří Beneš, programme of the concert Evening of Chamber Music II. Philharmonie Brno, 18 April 2012 [world premiere of the composition].