Janacek / Reiprich / Pavlis - Music for Wind Instruments - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Before he was completely overwhelmed by love for composing, Leoš Janácek pursued a career as a virtuoso pianist. He was closely familiar with the instrument, which served for him to share his innermost emotions and feelings. Janácek wrote his first opus, Thema con variazioni, at the age of 26, when he was studying at the Leipzig Conservatory. The miniature piece A Recollection is one of his last scores. The composer conceived his three essential piano works, 1.X. 1905, On an Overgrown Path and In the Mist, between 1900 and 1912, which was a difficult phase in his life. They are perhaps the most personal, most intimate pieces he wrote. Janácek was inspired by the sound of the cimbalom, an instrument he often heard when collecting folk songs in Moravia. The genes of the pianist Jan Bartoš evidently bear the traces of the ample musical tradition of his ancestors, including his grandfather, a cimbalom player. The legacy of folk music and the Silesian origin is what Janácek and Bartoš have in common. In his account of Janácek's music, the pianist reveals a profound musicological insight, as well as a fascinating intuition - the inspiring integration of the heart and the brain, owing to which Bartoš's previous Supraphon albums (Mozart - Concertos, SU 4234-2; Beethoven - Sonatas, SU 4252-2) have met with such great acclaim.

Janacek / Czech Philharmonic Orchestra - Best of Classics [COMPACT DISCS] Boxed Set date 10/26/2010

Leoš Janácek is one of the composers who brought fame to Czech music worldwide, and his Glagolitic Mass, Sinfonietta and mature operas are regularly performed on prominent stages around the globe. Yet the composer's folk-based works have remained relatively little known, even though traditional songs pulsate in the very heart of his music, significantly forming his singular idiom, and serving as a source of inspiration without which Janácek's oeuvre simply cannot be imagined. Owing to the artist's collecting passion, today we can enjoy numerous lovely songs which have been preserved in both music scores and period audio recordings. The collections Moravian and Hukvaldy Folk Poetry in Songs contain the most beautiful of them all. Janácek left the songs in their pure form, afforded to them by the landscape and the people living in it, merely - and with the sensitivity of a precious painting restorer - furnishing them with congenial piano accompaniments. The landscape and the language of Janácek's Hukvaldy and Moravia have also been imprinted in the very souls of the artists who have recorded this album, focusing on the purity of folk songs, reflecting simple directness and enchanting poetics. The present recording is the fruit of their joint seeking and endeavor to get in touch with the candid and deeply symbolic world of the songs. Into the very heart of Janácek's singular musical universe