For his third disc dedicated to the piano music of Bohuslav Martinu, Czech
Paul Kaspar has chosen five sets of short pieces: the 8 Préludes from 1929, the 6 Les Ritournelles from 1932, and the three sets of 14 Marionnettes written between 1912 and 1924. Once again,
Kaspar has turned in not just a superlatively played series of performances, but a brilliantly organized sequence of works. With his combination of a virtuoso's technique with a poet's insights,
Kaspar sounds the aesthetic and emotional depths of each work, and although half the pieces are light in content and all are brief in duration,
Kaspar maintains an ideal balance between whimsy and intensity. There's humor in his preludes -- such as En forme de Blues or En forme de Fox-Trot; excitement in his Les Ritournelles -- especially the concluding Allegro vivo -- and tenderness and lyricism in all his Marionnettes. Captured in crisp but detailed digital sound by Tudor, this disc should please Martinu collectors, and perhaps persuade listeners not familiar with the composer's piano works that they are well worth hearing.