Search - Martinu, Leichner :: Complete Piano Works

Good stuff, but not as great as the orchestral\chamber music

Ryan Morris | Chicago, IL | 02/28/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I consider Martinu to be one of the best composers of the last century. His works are all unique, individual, and of the highest quality and craftsmanship. It is a more of his works are not recorded more(it seems the same one are done over and over again) but when I saw the opportunity to fetch all his piano works in one fell swoop(with the exception of juvenalia now avail on Naxos) I took the dive.

Martinu's piano works are interesting and variable- though they all contain those virtues which make his music so attractable to me--they dont, some of them at least--seem to be as structurally sound. Unlike Bartok, or Prokofiev--these pieces dont offer evidence or provide a blueprint to his progression as a composer. If anything-they seem to be more like experiments or object lessons. Overall, I would say the best works here are the miniatures, the toccata, and the etudes and the sonata is interesting.

If you are new to Martinu, I would definetly recommend his orchestral and chamber music first-basically all of it since he is one of the masters---I would reserve this for those who, like me, are Martinu fanatics. also, now that there is an option in this music between this and the naxos--I prefer the naxos."