Leos Janácek: The Cunning Little Vixen - Lucia Popp / Eva Randová / Dalibor Jedlicka / Vienna Philharmonic / Vienna State Opera Chorus / Sir Charles Mackerras
(Following the release of their stunning recording of JanA...)
Following the release of their stunning recording of JanA?ek' Operatic Orchestral Suites, Vol. 1 on 8.570555, Peter Breiner conducts his insightful suites from two popular JanA?ek operas-KAt'a KabanovA and The Makropulos Affair-with New Zeal
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher.
Background
Leoš Janáček was born on July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, Moravia (now Czech Republic), to Jiří and Amalie (née Grulichová) Janáčková. Janacek was one among the fourteen children of the couple and was indeed a gifted child, who had great interest towards music since very early age.
Education
In 1865, Janacek attended the St. Augustine Abbey, Brno, while he was ten years old. Here, he received elementary musical education and it was from here that he learned to play the organ. This proved to be a platform for him, where he took over the choral singing under Pavel Krizkovsky. In 1874, he went to the school in Prague with his help of a sponsor, and his strong desire to become an organist. Janacek had criticized the performance of Skuhersky, which was published in the journal 'Cecilie' in the March 1875 edition. This led to his expulsion, but as Skuhersky sympathized, Janacek was able to continue his studies. The result was that in the year 1875, on July 24, Janacek topped the class and graduated with the best grades.
Janacek’s dreams lead him through the path of music, where he developed his composition skills and continued his studies in Leipzig and Vienna. His hard striving efforts to learn music had acquired him a unique technique by the age of twenty five, though he had not started any compositions by this time.
Career
In 1875 Janáček returned to Brno, where he spent the rest of his life. He worked indefatigably to make this provincial city into a musical center. He conducted choirs, established a symphony orchestra, and founded an organ school to train church musicians. Frank and impolitic, he alienated himself from the musical establishment in Prague, and thus his recognition as a composer was delayed.
Janáček became interested in collecting folk songs and in studying the relationships between language and music. He wrote down, in musical notation, sentences and expressions he heard, and he was fascinated with animal sounds.
Not until he was almost 50 did Janáček achieve musical maturity in his opera Jenufa (1903). First produced in Brno, it eventually received performances in Prague, Vienna (in German), cities in Germany, and New York City at the Metropolitan Opera in 1924. The last 20 years of his life were very fruitful and filled with honors. His operas Kata Kabanova (1921), The Cunning Little Fox (1924), The Makropolous Case (1925), and The House of the Dead (1928) were widely performed in the post-World War II period.
Janáček's opera texts show a wide variety of types, from the animal fairy-tale atmosphere of The Cunning Little Fox to the gloom of Fyodor Dostoevsky's House of the Dead. Jenufa and Kata Kabanova are in the tradition of verismo, that is, realistic, opera: they are stories of simple, rural people involved in violent emotional experiences. The outstanding traits of these operas are the vividness of emotional expression and the avoidance of typically operatic conventions. The melodic lines proceed in lines close to speech, while the orchestra uses leitmotivs in a free manner. All the operas, no matter how different in subject, express the composer's compassion for the human condition.
Janáček also wrote a number of important instrumental compositions. These include two String Quartets (1923, 1928), Taras Bulba for orchestra (1924), the Suite for Wind Instruments (1924), and numerous songs and piano pieces. His Glagolitic (Slavonic) Mass (1927) achieved international recognition.
Leoš Janáček died on August 10, 1928, in Ostrava due to pneumonia, and was buried in the Central Cemetery, Brno.
On July 13, 1881, Leoš Janáček married Zdenka Schulzova. They had two children: Olga Janáčková, Vladimír Janácek. His married life was blissful and settled in the initial years. In 1890, their son, Vladimir, died. The death of their daughter Olga, in the year 1903, aggrieved the family and the environment suddenly changed.