ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra reviews

There’s no reason why an Austrian or a German orchestra shouldn’t play Martinů’s six astonishing symphonies, as well as the Czechs (or Brits under a Czech conductor, in the late Jiří Bělohlávek’s magnificent second cycle). After all, Jakub Hrůša, next in line to set his seal on these masterpieces, told me in interview that one of his major discoveries recently was to find such a thing as a common middle-European sound world, and Martinůoften fits that identity with his homesick thoughts of Moravia from exile in America and Switzerland.