At the beginning of 1942, in an unfamiliar country far from the land of his birth, Bohuslav Martinů accepted a commission from the Russian emigré conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who had for eighteen years been at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Koussevitzky requested a work for large orchestra, to be dedicated to the memory of his wife, Natalie. Martinů, then aged 52, had been living in the United States for a little less than a year, having been forced to flee occupied France. He was still finding it difficult to adjust to his new surroundings and the different pace of life in New York. By habit an industrious and fluent composer, he found that the sources of his creativity had dried up temporarily upon relocation to the New World. Work on his compositions had become arduous and, as if to make life more difficult for himself, he chose to fulfil the commission with a Symphony – a genre which he had never wholeheartedly attempted. Indeed, it had been many years since he had written anything at all for full orchestra. Fortunately, many of the techniques he had adopted during his long and varied career proved well suited to the writing of a symphony and the work was highly successful: so successful, in fact, that he wrote four more in as many years, completing the cycle with a sixth in 1953.

A wide stylistic gulf seems to divide his earliest orchestral compositions from the Symphonies and yet many of them contain pointers to the distinctive symphonic style which he later evolved. They form a rewarding, though neglected, area of study. I will deal with each of them as it arises during the following short account of Martinů’s life up to his departure for Paris in 1923.

Martinů was born on 8 December 1890, in the little market town of Polička, situated in the Czech highlands on the border between Bohemia and Moravia. A visit to his birthplace is an unforgettable experience, since it is surely the most extraordinary of any composer. He was not born into a wealthy family: his father, Ferdinand, was a cobbler, who earned some extra money by acting as keeper of the church tower. (The Church of St James dominates the town to this day).