Arthur Fagen — Martinů: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 6 "Fantaisies symphoniques", Naxos (Audio CD)

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Product Details

• UPC: 0730099434829
• Catalogue Number: 8.553348
• Product Type: Audio CD
• Label: Naxos
• Composer: Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
• Conductor: Arthur Fagen
• Orchestra: National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
• Release Year: 1997
• Genre: Classical, Orchestral
• Country of Producing: Germany

Product Features

• Format: Compact Disc, Stereo, DDD
• Playing Time: 67:43
• Recorded: 24–26 June 1995, Concert Hall of the National Radio Company of Ukraine, Kiev
• Sealed / factory-wrapped

Overview

Martinů wrote his First Symphony in 1942, in American exile, having fled occupied Czechoslovakia and France — and it doesn't sound like a man licking his wounds. It's restless, generous, big-hearted music, closer in spirit to Dvořák's optimism than to anything grim you'd expect from the circumstances. The Sixth Symphony, subtitled "Fantaisies symphoniques" and completed a decade later, is a different animal entirely: looser in form, more experimental, written after Martinů had survived a serious fall and a period of illness, and it shows in the music's strange, dreamlike logic.

Arthur Fagen leads the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine through both works with real conviction — this Naxos disc was part of the label's ambitious complete Martinů symphony cycle, recorded in Kiev in the mid-1990s, when budget classical labels were quietly building some of the most respected orchestral catalogues around. For anyone who knows Martinů mainly through his chamber and concerto works, these two symphonies are a good way into the orchestral side of his output — one urgent and outward-facing, the other inward and searching.

Interesting Facts

• Martinů composed his Symphony No. 1 in the United States in 1942, his first symphony despite already being in his fifties — he'd avoided the form for decades, wary of the genre's weight.
• The Sixth Symphony's subtitle, "Fantaisies symphoniques," signals its unconventional structure — Martinů deliberately broke from strict symphonic form after a head injury from a fall in 1946 left him with lasting effects.
• This recording is part of Naxos's complete Martinů symphony cycle, one of several ambitious complete-cycle projects the label undertook with Eastern European orchestras in the 1990s.
• The National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, based in Kiev, became a frequent Naxos studio partner in this period, valued for combining full orchestral forces with efficient studio time.
• Conductor Arthur Fagen has built a career spanning both European opera houses and American orchestras, with a particular reputation for 20th-century repertoire.
• The Sixth Symphony was one of Martinů's final orchestral works, completed between 1951 and 1953, not long before his health began to decline further.

Track Listing

Symphony No. 1 (1942): 1. Moderato (10:49) / 2. Allegro – Poco moderato – Allegro come prima (8:03) / 3. Largo (9:19) / 4. Allegro non troppo (10:03)

Symphony No. 6 "Fantaisies symphoniques" (1951–1953): 5. Lento – Allegro – Lento (9:20) / 6. Poco allegro (8:22) / 7. Lento – Poco vivo adagio – Andante – Moderato – Allegro vivace – Lento (11:25)

Publishers

Naxos, catalogue 8.553348. Manufactured in Germany. Distributed by MVD Music and Video Distribution GmbH, Unterhaching, Munich.

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