Frank Martin must be, with his near-contemporary Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), the most prominent Swiss composer of the 20th Century. Other than the anecdotal circumstance of birth and nationality, both composers share the fact that they were stylistic independents, developing their own brand of modernism away from the dictates and strictures of the avant-garde of their time. Honegger’s music is certainly more approachable, more “first-half of the 20th century” (before I checked, I would have sworn that he was born easily 10 years before Martin) while Martin’s is definitely steeped in the century’s second half (his two last substantial compositions were his Requiem, which turned out then to be a very fitting valedictory work, and the Cantata for alto and baritone Et la vie l’emporta, which can be construed as meaning both And life took him/her away or And life ultimately prevailed). But, to ears familiar with contemporary music, Martin’s music is also very approachable. Martin was an independent in the same manner as, say, Henri Dutilleux: not serialist avant-garde, not neo-romantic backward-looking either, but following a modernism of his own. Parallels may also be drawn with Britten and Tippett (and, like Tippett re:Britten, Martin was slower than his younger peer to develop his own personal style, which eventually would be more advanced).
I have a lot of Frank Martin in my collection, but so far I’ve reviewed on two versions of his magnificent Requiem, his own, taped on the occasion of the works Premiere, on May 4, 1973 and reissued to CD on Jecklin-Disco JD 631-2 (1989), and the (again, live) one from Hamburg under Matthias Hoffmann-Borggrefe on Troubadisc TRO-CD 01441 (2012). Both versions are fine, Troubadisc offering the subtantial complement of Honegger’s La Danse des Morts, regrettably with an inadequate narrator.