The music of Bohuslav Martinů is no stranger to this blog. This time it's a work inspired by a series of frescos in the Basilica of San Francesco in the Tuscan city of Arezzo. Painted around the middle of the 15th Century by Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, the frescos depict The History of the True Cross.
Composed in Nice in 1955, Martinů's Frescoes of Piero della Francesca was first performed in Salzburg by the Vienna Philharmonic under Rafael Kubelik in 1956.
Czech record label Supraphon recorded this performance with Sir Charles Mackerras in 1984. Mackerras spent many productive years in Czechoslovakia, as it then was, and was noted for especially championing the music of Leoš Janáček. He was however at home in all kinds of repertoire - from a pioneering recording of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks, to many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
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