The life circumstances of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů made him an exile twice—first by choice, then by force; he ultimately became a wanderer. In 1923 he won a small scholarship to study in Paris and ended up making the French capital his home for seventeen years. Blacklisted by the Nazis, he and his wife were forced to flee in 1940, arriving in New York in 1941 after a series of delays.

Never entirely comfortable in the United States, Martinů spent the seven years following World War II in and out of the country, unable to accept a position in 1946 in Czechoslovakia owing to a slow recovery from a bad fall and other personal considerations. With the help of a Guggenheim fellowship he relocated to Paris in 1953, then lived briefly in Nice, later in Italy, and twice more in the US, not to mention many shorter sojourns in various places. He finally “settled” in Switzerland, where he died in 1959.

Martinů had been living in Paris for fifteen years by the time he wrote the First Cello Sonata in May 1939. Tension had gripped Europe with the Nazis’ rise to power, and his Czech homeland had been invaded just weeks before. Further, Martinů was in the midst of a personal crisis over his intense extramarital affair with young composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová. Though works of art do not necessarily coincide with biographic events, the Sonata’s angularities, laments, and bristling drive have often been described as reflective of this stressful time in Martinů’s life.

The composer dedicated the Sonata to French cellist Pierre Fournier, who gave the premiere with pianist Rudolf Firkušny, a fellow Czech exile, in Paris on May 19, 1940. Just nine days earlier Germany had invaded France, which prompted Martinů to look back on the concert as “a last greeting, a beam of light from a better world. . . . For several minutes we realized what music could give us and we forgot about reality.” The following month he and his wife Charlotte fled to the south of France and then to New York.

Much of the first movement swings along like a dance, but its dark hues have suggested a danse macabre to several commentators. Martinů opts for an almost Neoclassic sonata form, the main exception being the coda’s expansive proportions and its introduction of new material that seems to challenge returning materials.

In the impassioned slow movement, Martinů features an icily searching piano theme contrasted by a beautifully haunting cello melody. A great climax builds in the central section before the pathos of the opening cello melody returns. A series of piano chords and cello pizzicato evoke an eerie twinkling atmosphere that then sinks back into the opening lament.

Propulsive energy permeates the final sonata-form movement. Martinů provides contrast to his driven main theme with a swinging, lighthearted second theme, but the rhythmic vigor builds up again almost immediately. The development grows ever more insistent and the recap and coda only magnify the perpetual motion to the final triumphant C major chord.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe