Volume seven carries on the excellent work into ever more obscure areas of the composer’s repertoire. There were six world premiere performances in volume six and there are ten here – almost everything in fact.

Pohádka o Zlatovlásce (A Fairy-Tale of Goldilocks) is the earliest thing here, dating from 1910 and it sports youthful infatuations; there are Elektra quotations and swirling dance motifs, as well as hints of Suk. The second of the four movements is steeped in even older models – Dvorák, maybe a hint or two even of Smetana dances. The third panel is melancholic, with fulsome chording, and the final movement has some insinuating, folkloric plangency. Z pohádek Andersenovych (From Andersen’s Fairy-Tales) followed two years later but is less interesting in terms of influence and musical intention. Pertly conversational, sturdy and pleasingly lulling though it may be in part it almost entirely lacks distinctive features.

There then follows a sequence of small-scale works. Some are trinkets, whilst others are rather more evocative of a time and place. The Ballada shows his special brand of avuncular chordal drama: La Danse is a Stravinskian bauble: Honegger haunts the railroad rhythms of Le train hanté: then we have the strikingly noble carillon of Prélude. One thing Czechs could do with ease was a generic foxtrot of which Foxtrot narosený na ružku is a nice example. These are all good to have for the completist but Jaro (The Spring) is far, far more important than the surrounding trinkets. Amazing it’s never been recorded before. Written in 1921 it’s composed in the footsteps of Suk’s piano pieces but is spiced with echoes of French impressionism. It’s a most convincing piece, not quite three minutes in length, but highly representative of what influenced him in the early 1920s and where he was to go later in the decade. Make a beeline for this work.

So Koukl’s pilgrimage has come to its end. He has been a most worthy guide, and now takes his place at the top table of Martinu performers on record. At budget price he has no peers. As a complete cycle this set has no rivals. Individual performances from the likes of Firkušný, Leichner and others may be more arresting in isolation but the overarching reach of Koukl proves dominant and permanent.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International