Double Concerto

On one level, Martinů’s Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Timpani and Piano is a tribute to the spirit of Bach and Handel, reinvented by one of the 20th century’s most irreverent and imaginative musical mavericks. But it’s also an uncompromising document of its own troubled times: the summer of 1938, when Hitler prepared to seize Martinů’s homeland of Czechoslovakia. The Swiss billionaire and patron of classical music Paul Sacher had asked Martinů to write something for the virtuoso string orchestra that Sacher funded in Basel. Martinů responded with three urgent, emotionally charged movements in which two string orchestras engage in passionate rhythmic dialogue, while the timpani thunder like distant artillery and the piano gives a steel-toothed bite to Martinů’s increasingly anguished argument. The central “Largo” only ratchets the emotional stakes higher still. The result (in Martinů’s own words) is a wordless drama of “revolt, courage, and unshakeable faith in the future”.