Hyperion Records

Among Martinu’s acquaintances in America was the famous physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein was a modest violinist but apparently good enough to play Mozart sonatas with his friend the pianist Robert Casadesus. The Five Madrigal Stanzas were composed for this remarkable duo exactly one year after the Madrigal Sonata and are dedicated to Einstein, who is said to have played them with Casadesus at Princeton in private recitals.

They are more strongly inflected with elements of Czech folk song than the two previous madrigal compositions and, in deference to the amateur status of the dedicatee, are all of slow or, at most, moderate speeds. The violin part is comparatively simple but deceptively so, and there is obvious ‘writing down’ to the recipient. The piano part, on the other hand, is considerably more difficult as befitted Casadesus’s great reputation as a keyboard virtuoso. Though Martinu had made every effort to tailor his demands to Einstein’s technical limitations, Einstein was unable to make a reciprocal gesture to the composer’s scientific amateurism and Martinu’s rueful attempts to get to grips with the Theory of Relativity consequently remained unfulfilled.

from notes by Kenneth Dommett & Robert Matthew-Walker © 1998