The Concerto for harpsichord and small orchestra was composed in Amsterdam in 1951-52 as a commission for Isabelle Nef, to whom the work is dedicated. About the concerto Martin writes (in the posthumously published A propops de…: commentaires de Frank Martin sur ses œuvres, edited by Maria Martin in 1984): “I was staying at the North Sea when I began it, and the even rolling of the waves suggested to me the wavelike motion of the six eighth-notes that dominates the entire first section.” And to ...