String Trio No.1 (Parts)

Martinu String Trio No.1 (Parts)

The fate of Bohuslav Martinu’s String Trio No.1, written between 1923–1924 and missing until 2005, is extraordinary: the trio is the first work he completed in Paris after becoming a private pupil of the French composer Albert Roussel. It was probably performed twice in Paris in the course of 1924, and received its Czech premiere in February 1925, after which Martinu asked his friend Stanislav Novák to take care “of the scores of those pieces that were performed, so they do not get stowed away somewhere”, as he did not have any sketches or copies of them. Martinu’s fears came true: this sole existing copy of the trio vanished. It was not rediscovered until the Prague Institute of B. Martinu found the manuscript of the trio (the score and the viola and cello parts – the violin part is still missing) in the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen in the autumn of 2005.  The current urtext edition is based on this manuscript.  The Preface and Critical Commentary is written by Eva Velická (Czech, English, German, French).

- Score (H7965) and parts (H7965-22) available for sale