This volume completes Koukl’s survey of the Martinů piano concertos and further expands his survey of the complete piano works. People who have already invested in the seven volumes of solo piano need not hesitate to add this to their shelves. It contains the rarely recorded First Concerto—seldom recorded. It is a spiky affair in a neo-baroque style. There are plenty of delightful melodies and little justification for overlooking it all these years.

The major work here is Martinů’s Fourth Piano Concerto, without doubt the composer’s most intractable and unorthodox of the five. The concerto is stormy and episodic, not one that lends itself easily to listener accessibility, but not exactly a concerto that discourages audiences, either. Yet, for all its obstinacies and seeming structural detours, it is highly rewarding. Cast in two movements, it is a concerto that looks two ways: toward the less serious side of a composer who could write light music, and toward the more complex side of a composer who here desired greater expressive depth. In a sense, he succeeds in both quests: the concerto has many appealing melodic and rhythmic elements for first-time listeners, but also conveys a darker more profound expressive manner.

The give-and-take between soloist and orchestra in the Fourth Concerto comes across strangely, almost with a mutual hostility, as if conceived in the spirit of separation of church and state: there are long passages where the pianist either plays unaccompanied or sits idle while the orchestra takes center-stage. In the end, the work strikes the listener as a blend of the unsettling and the mysterious, with, in the first movement, lots of harp glissandos and occasional activity from the glockenspiel to fashion mystery, and, in the second, with a darker, eerie sense to impart uncertainty. The work seems to end triumphantly, however, and features a somewhat imaginative Gershwinian coda.

The Concerto No. 1 (1925) is neo-Classical and quite light. It’s what some might think of as cute and clever, and while that observation might imply a dismissive attitude, I’m suggesting nothing of the sort. Cast in three movements, it is a work many will like upon first hearing, with attractive rhythms and themes and lots of colorful piano writing, and with hints of Liszt in the second movement. It strikes the listener, at least this listener, as if it might have been written by a man under the spell of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella: try the playful opening, wherein the orchestra states the self-consciously neo-Classical main theme with an oxymoronic mixture of innocence and mischief.

The Third Concerto (1934) is somewhat closer in spirit to the First than the Fourth. But it has a few hints of Rachmaninov and Bartók here and there, especially in the quieter moments of the first movement. That said, the work is really not imitative, at all—it’s pure Martinů, always seeming to go its own, rather distinctive way, with colorful, often playful piano writing and more than a few whiffs of Czech exoticism.

Pianist Giorgio Koukl turns in fine work, matching the high level of artistry he achieved in the first issue in this series, which contained Concertos 2 and 5 and the Concertino. His dynamics and articulation, as well as his grasp of staccato writing, brilliantly capture Martinů’s coloristimore....

Review By Harlow Robinson,The Boston Globe,January 2011

It’s a mystery why the charming music of prolific Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) still remains so underrepresented in the standard orchestral repertoire. Perhaps the explanation lies in Martinů’s restless life: Born in Bohemia, he studied in Prague, decamped for Paris in the 1920s, fled to America to escape the Nazis, and died in Switzerland. Musically, too, Martinů’s eclectic style eludes categorization. Deeply influenced by his countryman Leoš Janáček, Martinů later embraced neo-classicism and jazz. Within a single composition, he can shift styles like an actor changing masks.

Koukl and Fagen complete their survey of Martinů’s piano concertos in fine style

Koukl’s splendid coupling of the Third and Fifth Concertos (3/10) has rightly drawn warm praise and this next instalment in his revelatory series of Martinů’s piano music carries on where the previous one left off. The same clarity and precision of touch is evident in his playing throughout, allied to a natural musicality and a positive sense of structure shared by conductor Arthur Fagen, who supports in exemplary fashion with the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra of Zlín.

Giorgio Koukl gives energetic and authoritative performances of each of the concertos

Bohuslav Martinů grew up in what is now the Czech Republic, came to maturity as a composer in Paris and lived in the United States during most of his final years. He left so much music behind—most of it extremely attractive—that performers and audiences have been slow to take it all in.

This second and final Naxos volume of his five piano concertos makes you wonder why these entertaining pieces aren’t at least as popular as Prokofiev’s comparable concertos. Both composers turned out music that’s fun to listen to and shows off a virtuoso’s skills.

Begin with the performances here: they’re superb. The continuing high standards of musical life in the Czech Republic are on display here: the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra of Zlín has the feel for Martinů’s style that one would expect of a specialist ensemble, but a much cleaner sound and sense of ensemble that you would normally hear in an orchestra from a city of 75,000 people, otherwise best known for Bata shoes. Prague-born Swiss pianist Giorgio Koukl, who points out that he and Martinů both got out of Czechoslovkia just ahead of invading armies, 30 years apart, is an admirable interpreter of the Czech composer who fused a sprightly French neo-classicism with a Czech attitude toward rhythm. All three of these piano concertos are crowd-pleaseres and deserve wider exposure. The two-movement Piano Concerto No. 4, “Incantation,” composed during one of Martinů’s stints in the U.S. in 1956, is a sort of dry Czech take on American movie music. Of the greatest interest are the two earlier concertos, written between the wars and describable, unlike so many other works of the period, as joyous. Sample the finale of the Piano Concerto No. 1 of 1926 (track 5), which transcends the neo-Baroque trend of the time with an irrepressible vigor. It’s a great pleasure. This all-Czech production, recorded at the House of Arts in Zlín, continues to suggest the riches of Eastern European music between the wars; composers from this part of the world synthesized the various experiments undertaken in larger musical centers into convincing and lasting wholes.