There are so many who jealously keep their secrets, for fear of losing them. But the mind of Martinů is so inventive that he does not care. Besides, is not the proclaiming of a secret the surest means of keeping it? –Pierre Octave Ferroud

After Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) is the leading Czech composer of the 20th century, but (like Milhaud and Villa-Lobos) his reputation was tarnished because he composed at amazing speed and almost never revised his scores, creating a substantial number of masterpieces plagued by their less eloquent counterparts.
Martinů was born in the small town of Polička in the Bohemian-Moravian highlands, from which Smetana and Mahler also came. His family lived in tiny room at the top of a church tower, where his father, a cobbler, earned money by watching for fires in the town below. (Martinů carried a postcard of the view from the tower for the rest of his life.) Young Bohuslav learned the violin, starting composing at 10 years old, and, thanks to donations from friends in Polička, was sent to the conservatory in Prague, where he was not a very successful student. It wasn’t until he was playing the violin regularly in the Czech Philharmonic that his education really began. In 1923, he won a small grant from the ministry of education to travel to Paris. He intended to stay for a few months, but remained for over seventeen years.
In Paris, Martinů studied with Roussel, was stunned by jazz and the music of Stravinsky, and started composing rapidly. In 1940, soon after the premier of his magnificent Double Concerto, Martinů was blacklisted by the Nazis and fled to America. Unlike many composers who fled to the United States, Martinů never felt comfortable in America, but health problems and the rise of the communism in 1948 prevented him from returning home.
Martinů’s Overture, H.345 is a lesser known later masterpiece—his only composition of 1953, with the possible exception of some final touches made to Sixth Symphony. Though a concert overture, it nonetheless strays into one of Martinů’s favorite forms—the concerto grosso—with a seven-member concertino featuring flute, oboe, two violins, viola, and two cellos.