FROM 1923 until his death in 1959 the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu lived abroad, first amid the artistic foment of Twenties and Thirties Paris, later in exile in the United States, and finally back in post-war Western Europe. It was in his exile in the USA that Martinu wrote his symphonies.

Bruckner was forty-two when he completed his Symphony No. 1, Brahms forty-three, and Elgar fifty-one. Martinů was fifty-two. Though he had written for large orchestra in his operas and some of his concertos, he had not composed a major work for large orchestra since La Rapsodie of 1928. Instead, his inclinations, in which his unease with grandeur played a large part, had led him instead to fruitful and lively investigations of the concerto grosso style. Tendering his commission, Koussevitzky had not specified a symphony; that was Martinů's choice.