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Czech composer Bohuslav Martin\u016f<\/a> left his home country for Paris after World War I, where he quickly absorbed the nascent neoclassical style. This movement was a direct reaction to the violence of the war, as composers attempted to cool tempers down by bringing back a pre-Beethoven aesthetic, updated for a modern age. <\/p>\n After the Second World War broke out, Martin\u016f fled to the United States in 1941, and it was in this country that he composed all six of his symphonies over an 11-year span. Recordings of Martin\u016f\u2019s symphonies are still rare, which is all the more reason why this new and exciting set from the Bamberg Symphony<\/a> and conductor Jakub Hr\u016f\u0161a<\/a> is so welcome.<\/p>\n As a Czech conductor who has written extensively about Martin\u016f and his music, Hr\u016f\u0161a is a natural leader for this project. He became music director of the Bamberg Symphony, a German orchestra with Czech roots, in 2016, when he was just 35 years old. Since then, Hr\u016f\u0161a\u2019s career has been on a meteoric rise: He took over as director of London\u2019s Royal Opera in 2025, and in 2028, he\u2019ll leave Bamberg for Prague to become the next chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.\u00a0<\/p>\n WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today\u201d newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n All but one of Martin\u016f\u2019s symphonies were commissioned by orchestras in the U.S., and their premieres were major events at the time, making Martin\u016f one of the most popular and successful European \u00e9migr\u00e9 composers in this country. Musically, they show the composer adapting his Czech-inflected neoclassical style for an American audience, while at the same time working through his feelings about being driven out of Europe by another destructive war.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just a few highlights from this set can illustrate Martin\u016f\u2019s musical evolution through the 1940s to the early 1950s. He wrote his First Symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1942, and the piece plunges us into the composer\u2019s uniquely traditional yet modern sound world at the start of the first movement.:<\/p>\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.<\/h2>\n