Janácˇek Complete Piano Works Janácˇek: On an Overgrown Path • In the Mist • Tema con variazioni • In Remembrance • Ej danaj Music for Gymnastics • To my Olga • Moravian Dances • Miniatures • Moravian Folksongs A Recollection • Intimate Sketches Leos Janácˇek is one of the four great composers who, together with Dvorˇák, Smetana and Martinu, put Czech music on the map and created an international reputation in the period of the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth centuries. Born in poor circumstances in Hukvaldy in northern Moravia in July 1854, the fifth of nine children, he was educated in the Moravian capital of Brno where he was to spend most of his lifetime - making him a Moravian rather than Bohemian composer, the flavour of the national folk music being a particular characteristic of his music. He was to die at a relatively old age in 1928 in the Moravian city of Ostrava although for political reasons and the existence of the Hapsburg Empire he would remain an Austrian citizen for most of his life until the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic after the First World War. Janácˇek’s music falls into two periods, basically the time before the composition of his opera “Jenufa” and then the late Indian summer of works, principally operatic, that followed the delayed success of that work. Although folk music plays an essential part as influence throughout his life, the earlier works are conventional and much indebted to local styles. Like so many central European composers and even figures outside the area such as Vaughan Williams in England, Janácˇek set off on a tour collecting folk songs and dances from the local population. The main point of Janácˇek’s rediscovery of these ethnic sources began with his tour of his own home area of northern Moravia with the folk expert Frantisek Bartos. This discovery of folk culture provided Janácˇek with the style that he would adopt throughout the remainder of his creative life - a dependence on the short and angular rhythms of the local musical style, rhythms that led to the speech patterns of his operatic and vocal works and which are found equally in the orchestral, chamber and instrumental works. Janácˇek’s musical style thus relies on a sense of tension and often unresolved yearning often brought about by means such the omission of key signatures and a melodic progression making use of fourths, fifths and seconds mixed with a high level of dissonance. Janácˇek was also inspired by the current of pan-Slavism of the time, looking principally to 2
Russian influences both musical and literary. It is fair to say that he was as much influenced by the music of Mussorgsky as he was by the literary works of Ostrovsky and Dostoevsky who would provide sources for two of his finest operas - “Katya Kabanova” and “From the House of the Dead”. Pan-Slavism also led him to study old church Slavonic which would be the source of his setting of the “Glagolitic Mass” of 1926. Another major influence on Janácˇek’s creative genius was his relationship to the women in his life. Married to a pupil of his ten years younger than himself, his marriage was officially terminated in 1917 when the composer embarked on an affair with a singer from the Prague production of his opera “Jenufa” - Gabriela Horvatova. That period also saw the death of his daughter Olga, a much loved child commemorated in his piano piece “To my Olga” of 1896. But the major relationship of his final years was his love for Kamila Stoesslova, a woman half his age who he had met in the Moravian Spa town of Luhacovice. the relationship was unreciprocated but Janácˇeks obsession was both real and all pervading. Kamilla and the Spa town can be sensed in the early opera “Osud” or “Fate” and she is the model for the song cycle “The Diary of One who disappeared” as well as the basis of the heroines in the operas “Katya Kabanova”, and “The Makropolus Case”. Perhaps the most intense portrayal of his love for her was however, to be found in one of his greatest chamber works - the second string quartet “Intimate Pages”. Only months after its composition Janácˇek was to die of pneumonia, the complication of a chill he had caught at Hukvaldy where Kamilla had been his guest. Janácˇek will mostly be remembered nowadays principally for his revolutionary and lasting operas, products of the final years of his life. Whilst “Jenufa” was premiered in Brno as early as 1904, it did not find real success until its premiere in Prague in 1916. This success led to the opening of the flood gates with the composition of the great quartet of operas which followed “Katya Kabanova” (1921), “The Cunning Little Vixen” (1924), “The Makropolus Case” (1925) and finally “From the House of the Dead” (1928). Of the mature operas, only the comical “Mr Broucek’s Excursions” and the autobiographical “Osud” were to prove less than successful. Aside from his success with his stage works, Janácˇek is remembered for a handful of choral, orchestral, chamber and instrumental works. Principal amongst these are the late “Glagolitic Mass” (1926), a vibrant setting of the old church Slavonic liturgy revelling in Janácˇek’s view of pantheism and the open cathedral that is nature; the splendidly festive “Sinfonietta” (1926), and the grandiose tone poem based on Gogol’s “Taras Bulba” (1918). The two string quartets are major 3
compositions in their genre, worthy to set beside those of Smetana and Dvorˇák and the somewhat eclectic song cycle on gypsy love “The Diary of One who Disappeared” is a worthy if somewhat difficult experiment in a mixed genre. Some of the late chamber works, often written for unlikely combinations such as the “Capriccio” (1925) for piano left hand and seven wind instruments, have also found favour with musicians and listeners alike. Throughout his life, Janácˇek also composed a small corpus of works for solo piano as represented in this collection. Many of the early piano works have been lost or destroyed but the opus one Zdenka variations, a simple and conventional enough piece does survive to show us the twenty five year olds first thoughts on keyboard writing. So too does the Moravian folk song “Ej dunaj” of 1892, a piece originally conceived as a piano transcription of a piece of local east Moravian colour which was later to be orchestrated with chorus and which finally finds its place as the first of a group of three Moravian dances including the “Celadensky” and “Pisky” which date from the much later period of 1904. In 1893, Janácˇek also wrote a series of pieces written “for gymnastics” - ostensibly a strange title but to be borne in mind that at this time in Bohemia, the “Sokol” movement was encouraging physical exercise and calisthenics as a healthy part of popular life. The following year, 1905, a workman named Frantisek Pavlik was killed in Brno during an ethnic revolt between Czechs and Germans over the founding of a Czech university in the Moravian capital. Janácˇek, always a supporter of the nationalist cause, was deeply moved by the event and set about writing his extraordinary piano sonata in three movements I.X.1905 - Z ulice (From the street). Janácˇek destroyed the third movement and thus the original premiere consisted solely of the two movements - “Foreboding” and “Death”. In 1901 -1902, Janácˇek began preparing a set of Slovak folk melodies, originally collected by Emil Kolar, for harmonium, perhaps taking the example of Dvorˇák’s “Drobnosti” as his choice of the instrument. These were to become the basis of the first part of his most famous set of piano pieces - “On an Overgrown Path”. The music is informed by the influences of Debussy and Bartok along with Janácˇek’s own folk music specific style. The pieces are all short and often reflective like the “Blown away Leaf” section or even more sombre, as in the “Madonna of Frydek” but also can rise to the engaging lightness of depictions of happiness such as the perception of women’s chatter in the “Swallows” piece. the first series consists of ten pieces and was later supplemented in 1942 by two new pieces without titles marked simply “Andante” and “Allegretto” and by the inclusion of the “Paralipomena” of a further three pieces from around the same time as the original series. 4
The cycle of four atmospheric pieces “In the Mists” dates from 1912 and was sponsored by the Club of Art Friends in Brno. The opening Andante recalls Brahms whereas the second movement is a song marked Molto Adagio. Folk dance is to the fore in the third movement and the finale is a dramatic Presto. The final pieces of Janácˇek’s piano works include the aptly titled “Intimate Sketches” and the bittersweet “Reminiscence” his final work of 1928, somehow the summation perhaps of whole career guided by love of his country and the ultimate and unattainable love of a woman. Dr David Doughty Janácˇek dilemmas There are always difficult choices to make where Janácˇek’s piano music is concerned. Many of the works have a rather confusing and chaotic history: a good example is the so-called Sonata I.X.1905. The composer burnt the manuscript of the once existing third movement shortly before the first performance and eventually destroyed the two other movements as well. Luckily, these were miraculously preserved in copy by the first interpreter, Ludmila Tucková, and were published in 1924 with the authorization of the composer. It’s hard to know, however, whether the obvious and less obvious inconsistencies in that edition were intentional, and the performer has to make his own choices at various points in the score. Similar things apply to the two series of On an Overgrown Path. The first series started off as a set of six pieces for harmonium, then one more piece was added, but this piece, together with one of the original six was withdrawn from the published version. The remaining five pieces were printed in two different volumes of a collection for harmonium called “Slavic Melodies”, containing work of several composers. Those five pieces were then rewritten for the piano and another five pieces added to constitute the ten pieces that we now know as the first series. The second series of the cycle consisted of three pieces, but the third piece was never completed. One has to presume that Janácˇek for some reason never found time to make a final workout of this piece (Vivo in Eb Maj.) but in my opinion it constitutes, tonally and characterwise, a logical entity with the two first pieces. I have therefore attempted to fill in the blank spaces of the piece on the basis of sketches known to us today. In some editions of the second series, the two rejected pieces for harmonium have been inserted together with the three pieces just mentioned. I believe this is an erroneous grouping and therefore place the two rejected pieces elsewhere in this recording. 5
There are other dilemmas: How to relate to the unclear repeat signs in the third piece of In the Mist? How to interpret the wildly chaotic rhythmical notation of the untitled miniature, scribbled down on a piece of paper? How to solve the riddle of another miniature (I am waiting for you!), of which only the first part is preserved on a page torn out of his intimate diary, also containing the composer’s will? In the latter case I decided not to attempt a completion, and although another piece in the same diary (The Golden Ring) was probably written a couple of days later, I place this fragment as the last item of the recording. Then there is the question of the transcriptions of folk music. Strictly speaking, these cannot be regarded as original works. But two of the dances that first appeared in a collection of Moravian Folk dances, Celadensky and Pilky, subsequently underwent a more elaborate transcription. Later, Janácˇek was to use them, even more elaborately, together with two other dances, in his Lachian Dances for orchestra. To put the mentioned two dances in a context, I decided to combine them some of the most typical items from the collection of Moravian Folk dances. Of the early works that were never published in Janácˇek’s lifetime, I have included Tema con variazioni but not the Rondo from 1877, considering the latter as a student’s work. Finally, I have grouped the important cyclic works on one disc and the various other works on another, respecting, where possible, a chronological order on each disc. Håkon Austbø HÅKON AUSTBØ - Piano
Foto: Edwin Roelofs
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In 1974 the Daily Telegraph, London, already characterised Håkon Austbø as the “possessor of towering talent worthy of international recognition”. Since then, critics from the Carnegie Hall, New York, to the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, have given this extraordinary artist rave reviews. Due to his unusual versatility and the originality of his repertoire, Håkon Austbø has won a coveted position in today’s world of music. Of Norwegian origin, Mr. Austbø performed extensively in his homeland before continuing his studies
at the Paris Conservatoire and the Ecole Normale de Musique. In 1970 he was the first non-French to win the “Concours National de la Guilde Française des Artistes Solistes” in Paris, and in 1971 he gained international attention when an unanimous jury awarded him the first prize of the Olivier Messiaen Competition for Contemporary Music in Royan, France. Håkon Austbø furthered his studies at the Juilliard School, New York, at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Munich, and in London. He was prize winner of the international Munich competition (in piano duo with Marina Horak, 1974), of the Ravel Competition in Paris (1975), and, as a member of Trio du Nord, of the UNESCO International Rostrum, Bratislava (1975). Presently based in the Netherlands, Mr. Austbø enjoys an extensive solo career throughout Europe, America and Asia, and his recordings for various labels have received international acclaim. In the CD field, he brought out excerpts from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux on Fidelio and the 10 Skryabin sonatas on SIMAX. The latter was acclaimed as a reference recording by Gramophone Magazine and received the Norwegian Grammy award in 1990. Two years later Mr. Austbø received the same award for another SIMAX recording with the Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk, and again in 1995 for Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur I’Enfant-Jésus . This recording, part of a NAXOS project that will include the complete Messiaen piano music, was also chosen by Classic CD as the best available version of the work. The next item in this project, the complete Catalogue d’Oiseaux coupled with Petites Esquisses d’Oiseaux, was awarded the Edison prize 1998 for the best solo recording. The 8 Préludes and the 4 Etudes de Rythme have also been released. His discography further includes a Schumann recording for Vanguard Classics, the Norse melodrama EddaDa with the actress Juni Dahr, and piano works by Erik Satie, Grieg (Lyric Pieces) and Brahms (Klavierstücke) for Brilliant Classics. Mr. Austbø received the prize of the Norwegian music critics in 1989 and was chosen “Performer of the Year” in Norway in 1992. He teaches piano major at the Amsterdam conservatory and is moreover first vice president of the international Skryabin Society, Moscow. As a propagator or Skryabin’s work, he is the initiator and artistic director of the LUCE-project that offers a unique realisation of the colour part in the symphonic poem Prometheus. Recording: 5-7 January 2004, Westvestkerk, Schiedam, The Netherlands Producer & engineer: Peter Arts, Rotterdam 2005 & C 2013 Brilliant Classics
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