レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1928）：オペラ「利口な女狐の物語」の大組曲（ヤクプ・フルーシャ編曲）

リヒャルト・シュトラウス（1864－1949）：アルプス交響曲　作品64

首席指揮者ヤクプ・フルーシャ率いるバンベルク交響楽団のコンサートでは、世代が近い2人の作曲家の作品の、作品へ自然を投影する手法の大きな違いを紹介します。

レオシュ・ヤナーチェクが並外れた作曲家でありながら、交響楽団のための楽曲をわずかしか作曲しなかったために、ヤナーチェクの死後短期間に多くの指揮者たちが、交響楽団の演奏向けに、彼のオペラのスコアをオペラ組曲として編曲しました。

そんな組曲をまず初めにオペラ『利口な女狐の物語』から生み出したのは、才能ある指揮者、ヴーツラフ・タリフでした。その際はもちろん第1幕部分を利用したにとどまりました。2017年に同じオペラから組曲を作るために、単にオーケストラの演奏部分だけを使うことを決めたのが、指揮者ヤクプ・フルーシャでした。彼は、『利口な女狐』において、歌が入らない部分が3分の1以上に上ることを良く分かっていたからです。そうやって、オペラの幕を時系列で追いながら、オーケストラのために作曲された部分を演奏させる組曲が出来上がったのです。

『アルプス交響曲』は、戦時中の1914－1915に作曲された、リヒャルト・シュトラウスの交響詩の中でも演奏される機会が少ない曲です。作曲家は『家庭交響曲』を作曲した後、オペラの作曲にのみ従事することを考えていましたが、幸いその抱負は破られるに至りました。ガーミッシュにあった田舎の家の窓から、アルプスのツークシュピッツェの山頂や壮大な山脈ヴェッテルシュテインの美しい景色が望め、この自然の風景を楽譜に残そうと決めたのです。

シュトラウスの交響詩はもっぱら目に見える事実を描写する、印象的な音楽によるアルプスのパノラマを生み出す方法をとり、自然との精神的関係性を表すものではありません。この音楽の絵画は特別な作品です；楽譜の中には、カウベル、あるいは雷を表す楽器を使用していることがよみとれます。この交響曲が初めてベルリンで演奏された時には、牧歌と評されました（同様に、ヤナーチェクは自ら作曲した『利口な女狐の物語』を「森の牧歌」と名付けています）。それまでのシュトラウス作品にみられなかった、素朴といえるほど一定の簡素さについて、作曲家自身が次のように述べています「私は一度、乳を出す牝牛のように作曲してみたかったんだ。」

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1928）：1905年10月１日（1905年10月1日　街頭にて） JW VIII/19

草陰の小径 第1集、第2集 　JW VIII/17

主題と変奏　JW VIII/6

霧の中　JW VIII/22

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1st October 1905), JW VIII/19

On an Overgrown Path, series 1, 2, JW VIII/17

Thema con variazioni, JW VIII/6

In the Mists, JW VIII/22

A piano recital by one of the most gifted pianists of the younger generation is always one of the highlights of festival concerts. Jan Bartoš recorded and published Janáček´s complete piano works with Supraphon in 2019, and immediately received accolades from foreign reviewers, such as the prestigious Editor´s Choice award from Gramophone magazine.

The composition 1. X. 1905 (“From the Street, 1st October 1905”) was created spontaneously as a reaction to a tragedy which took place during demonstrations for a Czech university in Brno. After years of efforts to establish a Czech higher education institution in Brno, the government agreed that Brno citizens should be allowed to decide for themselves about whether a Czech university should be created or not. However, as Brno was predominantly German, the German representatives of the city were afraid of Czechs gaining greater influence and so convened a “Volkstag” in Brno on 1st October 1905. German associations and organizations from far and wide were invited to demonstrate their opposition to the foundation of a Czech University in Brno. In response, the Czech citizens of the city organized a large anti-German demonstration. Street fights took place between the two camps, and the police and subsequently also the army were called in. During one of the battles, a young Czech worker named František Pavlík was killed. Filled with impressions from this tragic event, Janáček sat down to write the originally three-movement composition From the Street, I. X. 1905. However, shortly before its premiere on 27th January 1906 he burnt the last movement, and after another performance in Prague he even threw the whole manuscript into the Vltava River. Fortunately, the first performer of the composition, the pianist Ludmila Tučková, kept the original copy and made it public quite some time later, in 1924. Thanks to her, this piano piece, forgotten by Janáček for many years, has been preserved.

The piano cycle of poetic compositions On an Overgrown Path was created gradually during 1900, 1908 and 1911. Janáček wrote the first five compositions of the first series of the cycle in 1900. They were published by a teacher from Ivančice, Emil Kolář, as small compositions for the harmonium in several books for music students entitled Slavonic Melodies. The editor, Jan Branberger, played a role in popularising the cycle when he arranged for the compositions to be printed by a Prague publisher, Bedřich Kočí, in 1908. The interest of publishers in the compositions led Janáček to the creation of other parts, and so the cycle grew to comprise a total of ten pieces, to which the composer assigned poetic titles. On 30^th September 1911, shortly before the first series of the cycle was published by Píša´s publishing house, Janáček released the first composition from a new series of the cycle On an Overgrown Path in the Večery fiction section of the Lidové noviny newspaper, this time without a poetic name. The printed source was based on Sedláček´s undated copy containing a total of three numbered compositions, all without a name, the last of which is basically a sketch that Bartoš, for obvious reasons, did not include in the second series.

Janáček greatly valued the piano compositions Thema con variazioni (or also Zdenka Variations) at the time of its creation, and he even labelled them Opus No. 1, even though he had composed many other pieces before. The creation of this composition dates to the beginning of 1880, i.e. to the period when the composer was studying at the Conservatory in Leipzig. He wrote the piece under the direction of his professor, Leo Grill, and dedicated it to his fiancée Zdenka Schulzová. For the young Janáček it was an important work in which he tested his ability to compose in the style of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Liszt or Brahms.

Janáček completed his piano cycle In the Mists in April 1912. Not a long time before, in 1910, he had moved to a new house in the garden of Brno’s organ school with his wife and maid, and there, hiding from the world, with broken self-confidence and in a melancholy mood, he composed his last more extensive work for solo piano. He worked on it shortly after listening to piano compositions by the French composer Claude Debussy, and it is no coincidence that his dreamlike melancholic work contains elements of musical impressionism. The cycle In the Mists won the first prize in a contest for composers run by the Club of Friends of Art, which was supposed to publish the winning work. However, Janáček left the opportunity to have a composition published to his pupil, Jaroslav Kvapil, who came second in the contest. In the Mists was played for the first time by Marie Dvořáková in Kroměříž on 7^th December 1913.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

クロード・ドビュッシー（1862‐1918）：フランスの3つの歌　L115、歌とピアノのための作品

クロード・ドビュッシー：バラード　L70 、ピアノのための作品

グスタフ・マーラー（1860－1911）：亡き子を偲ぶ歌、歌とピアノのための作品

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854‐1928）：モラビアの民俗歌曲　JW V/2、歌とピアノのための作品

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク：1905年10月1日（1905年10月1日、街頭にて）JW VIII/19

This recital by the outstanding singer Tomáš Král will present songs by authors who were born within the space of ten years and are some of the most respected authors that opened the door to the musical breakthrough of the 20^th century. The songs presented at the concert were also born in close proximity timewise – between the years 1892-1904. So close, and yet so distant…

The songs Trois chansons de France by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) were created in 1904 and dedicated by the author to the singer Emma Bardac. There are three songs: two are roundels set to verse from the 15^th century by Charles d´Orléans, while the third was composed to a 17^th century poem by Tristan L´Hermite.

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) wrote his Kindertotenliede in 1901 and 1904. The composer drew from a collection by Friedrich Rückert from 1833–34. From more than 428 poems he chose only five for his cycle. The songs were originally written for alto voice with an orchestral accompaniment. The melodies of the songs, in whose texts Rückert reacted to the death of children, make an extremely strong impression with their extraordinarily natural character (which approaches that of folk songs). The cycle is one of the highlights of Mahler´s song output.

Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs is one of the most extensive cycles by Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), being made up of 53 songs. The composer worked on it between 1892-1901, so within a period that’s also connected with his work on the opera Jenůfa. Janáček was intensively engaged in folk music and song collection from approximately 1888, and the peak of this activity dates back to the 1890s, when this interest was closely connected to his compositional work. He remained faithful to folk songs throughout his life, however. He also devoted many years to adapting folk songs to be sung with a piano accompaniment. He experimented with them to some extent, and as a result these songs form a very distinctive part of the composer´s oeuvre. In 1892, the Šolc publishing house released the second edition of the Bouquet of National Moravian Songs, which was compiled by František Bartoš and Lev Janáček. On that occasion the publisher asked Janáček to add piano accompaniments to the songs. Janáček did so for fifteen songs which Šolc published in a first book in 1893. The second book was published in 1902, when the publisher printed the remaining 38 songs. They weren’t released together as a set until 1908, when they were published under the name Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs. The songs were performed for the first time (and only four of them) in Brno in 1904. The cycle was probably not performed completely during the composer´s life.

Two piano compositions will also be performed at the concert: Ballade slave by Claude Debussy from 1890, and 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1^st October 1905), which Leoš Janáček composed in 1905.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1924）：永遠の福音　JW III/8、ヤロスラフ・ヴルフリツキー詩、ソロ、混声合唱、オーケストラのためのレジェンド

グラゴール・ミサ　JW III/9、ソロ、混声合唱、パイプオルガンとオーケストラのための作品

Leoš Janáček (1854–1924): The Eternal Gospel, JW III/ 8, a legend for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra based on a poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický

The Glagolitic Mass, JW III/9, for soloists, mixed choir, organ and orchestra

The gallery of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Old Brno was a very significant place for Janáček. He was raised in the Augustinian abbey from the age of 11, sang as a choral scholar in the Old Brno basilica gallery, and subsequently also played the organ there. After Pavel Křížkovský left for Olomouc, Janáček became the director of the choir in 1872.

The legend in verses with the title The Eternal Gospel – Legend 1240 from the collection Frescoes and Tapestries published in 1891 is inspired by the teachings of the medieval monk Joachim of Fiore (1132-1202), whose interpretation of history culminates in the period of Holy Spirit, or in other words the love of all mankind for all of creation. It is somewhat symbolic that Janáček set this message to music shortly before the outbreak of World War I. We do not know exactly when the composition was made, but the first document confirming the existence of the completed piece dates from 1914. In Janáček´s The Eternal Gospel, the prophecy of Joachim of Fiore is divided into four parts with an emphasis on the tenor part and the choir. The Gospel is closely connected musically with the opera The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, and not only as far as the instruments are concerned. The premiere took place on 5^th February 1917 staged by the Prague singing association Hlahol and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra led by the conductor Jaroslav Křička.

The Glagolitic Mass is undoubtedly one of the foremost spiritual compositions of the 20^th, or indeed any century. Janáček gave some thought to the composition in 1920 but didn´t get round to commencing purposeful work on it until 1926, when he composed the piece during a rainy stay at the spa in Luhačovice. The use of the Church Slavonic language is not surprising in Janáček´s case because the monastery in Old Brno, where he spent the latter part of his childhood, was a centre of the cult of Cyril and Methodius. Janáček himself, as a choral scholar, took part in the grand Velehrad celebrations held to mark the occasion of the 1000^th anniversary of Cyril´s death. The work was generously conceived for soloists, choir, orchestra and organ, and its premiere was performed by Beseda brněnská with the National Theatre orchestra on 5^th December 1927 under the baton of Jaroslav Kvapil.

The Glagolitic Mass is one of the most oft-performed spiritual compositions of the 20^th century, and it still amazes and enchants through its novelty, energy and tenderness. Even though Janáček dedicated this composition to a high dignitary of the Catholic church, the Archbishop of Olomouc Leopold Prečan, the spiritual dimension of the work goes beyond Catholic doctrine and aims somewhere towards Janáček-style pantheism.

Autor: Jiří Zahrádka

ボフスラフ・マルティヌー（1890－1959）：弦楽四重奏 第2番、H150

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1928）：L.N.トルストイの作品から生まれたカルテット「クロイツェル・ソナタ」　JW VII/8

アントニーン・ドヴォジャーク（1841－1904）：弦楽四重奏　番号3　変ホ長調　作品97

Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959): String Quartet No. 2, H 150

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Quartet inspired by L. N. Tolstoy´s “Kreutzer Sonata”, JW VII/8

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): String Quintet No. 3. in E flat major, Op. 97

Bohuslav Martinů´s first undisputed masterpiece in the field of chamber music is the String Quartet No. 2 from 1925. The composer created it at a time when he was already being influenced by his stay in Paris amidst its musical culture. The quartet, which Martinů composed and subsequently revised in Polička in the summer of the same year, seems on the one hand to be in balance with romantic and impressionist traditions. However, it was also something new in the context of the composer´s chamber work. With this quartet Martinů did not to strive to convey “a big idea” or message – the work attempts to be factually objective and impersonal, an approach which he picked up in Paris from some works by Stravinsky.

In the summer of 1925, when the quartet was completed, a string quartet was formed by a group of musicians around Stanislav Novák, a friend of Bohuslav Martinů’s, and it was this new ensemble that performed the composition for the first time. It was of great importance to the young author that his String Quartet No. 2 was published by the prestigious Universal Edition publishing house.

The Quartet inspired by L. N. Tolstoy´s “Kreutzer Sonata” dates from 1923. However, the beginnings of the composition date back to 1908, when Janáček composed the now missing Piano trio, inspired by Tolstoy´s novel. Janáček used the musical material from the trio later during the composition of the first string quartet. He dedicated it to the famous Czech Quartet, which performed its premiere on 17^th October 1924. The seventy-year-old author attained great success with this work. For example, in 1925 it was performed at the International Festival of the Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Venice.

The String Quintet No. 3 in E flat major is one of the most highly regarded chamber compositions by the world famous Antonín Dvořák. He composed it in 1893 during his stay in America. The piece was created in the immediate vicinity of the String Quartet in F major during his holiday stay in Spillville. It is a work of immense originality inspired by his time in America, and it is characterized by the use of pentatonic, syncopated rhythms and a hint of Indian folklore. At the same time, the composition is very dense and expressive thanks to the extended instrumental composition. The String Quartet had its premiere on 12^th January 1894 in New York, performed by the Kneisl Quartet with Max Zach playing the second viola. The work was first played live in Prague on 10^th October 1894 by the Czech Quartet with Ferdinand Lachner.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク（1854－1928）：わらべ歌　JW V/17、9声合唱と10の楽器のための作品

ボフスラフ・マルティヌー（1890－1959）：泉開き　H354、ソロ、朗読、女声あるいは児童合唱と室内アンサンブルのためのカンタータ

ハンス・クラーサ（1899－1944）：ブルンジバル、アドルフ・ホフマイスター台本の2幕についての児童オペラ

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Nursery Rhymes, JW V/7 – for 9 voices and 10 instrumentalists

Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959): The Opening of the Wells, H 354

Cantata for soloists, reciter, female or children´s choir and a chamber ensemble

Hans Krása (1899–1944): Brundibár

Children´s opera in two acts with a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister

Janáček´s playful Nursery Rhymes from 1925 is one of his few compositions that will also appeal to younger listeners. He found inspiration (as he had many times before) in the Lidové noviny newspaper, where nursery rhymes with cheerful drawings by Josef Lada, Ondřej Sekora and Jan Hála were published. Janáček had a whole collection of them at home. He chose eight of them and composed a cycle of compositions for 3 mezzo-sopranos, clarinet, piano and a children´s drum. The premiere took place in the hall of the Besední dům in Brno on 26^th October 1925, and it was a great success. One year later, the composer extended the Nursery Rhymes to contain ten more items. Moreover, he added other voices and instruments to the score and framed them with a short overture and a finale. It is interesting that Janáček wanted colour images to be projected while the composition was being performed but the technology available at the time was insufficient for the execution of his vision. Josef Lada fulfilled Janáček´s wish much later, in 1948, when he made a cartoon based on the Nursery Rhymes together with the director Eduard Hofman. It was Lada´s first experience with animated films. At the concert, Nursery Rhymes will be accompanied by the original film.

The Opening of the Wells is probably the most famous work by Bohuslav Martinů. This is probably due to the artist´s intimate confession of his loneliness and unfulfilled desire to return home, which was denied to him by the Communist regime. It is not surprising that this native of Vysočina longed so much for his home when his last visit to his homeland had taken place in 1938. Perhaps that is why he responded so positively to the text by Miroslav Bureš, a native of Polička, and in 1955 composed this fragile chamber cantata which conveys the listener back to an ancient ritual for welcoming the spring. In Martinů´s work, this custom is intertwined with the wisdom of old age and an understanding of the fate which has awaited all humans for generations untold.

This edition of the festival will once again commemorate a work intended for children who were deported to the Terezín Ghetto during World War II. This time, it will probably be the most famous piece connected with Terezín, the children´s opera Brundibár composed by Hans Krása with a text by Adolf Hoffmeister. The opera was originally created for a competition organized in 1938 by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education. Unfortunately, the events of history unfolded differently and the competition was not evaluated. In 1944, the director of the Prague Jewish orphanage, Otto Freudenfeld, decided to perform the opera. However, the composer himself didn´t take part in the production as he had already been deported to Terezín. Subsequently, Freudenfeld also went to Terezín and he managed to smuggle the piano abstract from the opera into the camp. Krása re-instrumented it again and the famous premiere took place on 23^rd September 1943 in the Magdeburg barracks hall. The opera Brundibár, which is about an oppressor who is defeated by the joint forces of children and animals, gave the audience and the child performers from Terezín a chance to forget for just a moment the horrific world that surrounded them. Needless to say, many of the performers didn´t live to see the end of the war, just like the author of the opera himself, Hans Krása, who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

For the fourth time, the Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts will present a programme prepared by its students at the Janáček festival. The intention is to present – in an unconventional manner – interesting and artistic student activities as well as the individual study specialization areas, which the usual concert visitors are unfamiliar with. The audience will have the opportunity to hear performances by young artists and also to walk through and view different parts of the faculty (from the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts concert hall to the stage areas used during tuition, and even completely untraditional places, such as the school corridors) while being accompanied everywhere by young artists. The whole event is being prepared by opera direction students, who will present an “interactive music art exhibition” to the concert visitors in collaboration with students of other musical specializations.

Author: Monika Holá

アルノルト・シェーンベルク（1874－1951）：月に憑かれたピエロ　作品21、朗読、フルート（ピッコラ）、クラリネット（バスクラリネット）、バイオリン（ヴィオラ）、チェロ、ピアノのための作品

イーゴリ・ストラヴィンスキー（1882－1971）：プルチネラ（バレエ）、ソプラノ、テノール、バス、オーケストラのための作品

レオシュ・ヤナーチェク：コンチェルティーノ　JW VII/11、ピアノ、2丁のバイオリン、ヴィオラ、クラリネット、フレンチホルン、ファゴットのための作品

Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951): Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21, For a reciter, flute (piccolo), clarinet (bass clarinet), violin (viola), violoncello and piano

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971): Pulcinella (ballet), for soprano, tenor, bass and orchestra

Leoš Janáček: Concertino JW VII/11 for piano, two violins, clarinet, horn and bassoon

The concert will feature two representative works from musical history which were created over a period of eight years and form basic polar opposites to the paths which 20^th century music began to follow afterwards.

Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 is intended for a reciter (the voice is not specified in the score but traditionally a soprano is used), flute (piccolo), clarinet (bass clarinet), violin (viola), violoncello and piano, and is an interpretation of 21 poems by Albert Giraud. This 1912 masterpiece by Schönberg is written with tonal and harmonic freedom using classical forms; its dramatic, jubilant and intense character places it among the highest peaks of expressionist music. The composition consists of three groups of seven very short “melodramas” and it is written to be recited in a precise and specific manner. The reciter must conform to exactly defined notation and often oscillates between singing and speaking.

Schönberg works here masterfully not only with forms but also with colour: he combines ensemble instruments in a remarkable manner using every conceivable playing technique. The instruments often need to be played in extreme positions and the work is exceptionally difficult to perform.

The ballet Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky is the exact opposite of Pierrot lunaire. The author had begun living outside Russia before World War I, mostly in France and Switzerland. In Paris he became close to Sergei Diaghilev, a promoter of Russian art and the organizer of the Russian Ballet, with which leading modern composers (Debussy, Satie, Poulenc, Prokofiev) and artists (Picasso, de Chirico, Braque, Matisse) cooperated. Stravinsky wrote his first ballet scores for Dagilev´s ensemble: The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, works of groundbreaking significance not only within the composer’s oeuvre but in terms of European music in general. The new, expressively aggressive sound of Stravinsky´s music of this period, where the rhythm is placed above melody and harmony, culminates in the ballet The Rite of Spring, whose premiere in 1913 ended in a legendary scandal. The sung ballet Pulcinella from 1919 was also made to order for Diaghilev´s Russian Ballet. However, there was a change in Stravinsky´s work at the end of the 1920s. Instead of unrestrainedly rhythmic “barbaric” scores, works of a more ‘chamber’ nature were born, marking a turn towards neoclassicism. The source for the ballet Pulcinella was the unpublished compositions of an Italian master from the 18^th century, G. B. Pergolesi, which Diaghilev found during his stays in Italy. He had them copied, and presented them to Stravinsky for editing and the subsequent creation of music for the ballet. These were compositions from the archives of the Naples Conservatory: Act 3 of Il fratello inamorat from 1732, and fragments from the opera Il Flaminio. He also added melodic material from Triol sonatas for the violin and continuo, as well as some well-known arias.

Stravinsky was later accused of not treating the great composer with enough reverence and respect. However, according to Stravinsky respect always remains infertile and can never be a productive and creative element. The theme of the ballet was, again, determined by Diaghilev, who found a manuscript of Neapolitan theatre comedies from 1700 when in Naples and chose from among them the comedy Four Identical Pulcinellas, which featured characters from Italian commedie dell´arte. Leonid Mjasin took charge of the ballet’s choreography, and Pablo Picasso was the stage designer. The premiere of the ballet took place at the Paris Opera in 1920 and Stravinsky was extremely pleased with the final form of the performance: “The performance of Pulcinella was one of those – certainly precious – theatre moments where everything is interconnected and the sum of all the parts – the theme, music, choreography and design, creates a continuous, homogeneous whole.” Pulcinella remains one of the most beautiful works of neoclassicism to this day.

Concertino, which Janáček (1854–1928) himself sometimes called a ‘small piano concerto’, is the middle of three chamber compositions produced at the composer´s creative zenith (Youth, Concertino and Capriccio). Janáček was inspired to compose Concertino in 1924 by an excellent performance by the outstanding Czech pianist Jan Heřman, to whom the author subsequently dedicated the work. It was originally supposed to be a suite called Spring. Shortly before finishing the composition, Janáček wrote to his friend Kamila Stösslová from Hukvaldy: “… I’ve composed a piano concerto named “Spring” here. There is a cricket, flies, a roe-deer – a swift creek – and a person…” The title ‘Spring – Suite’ was replaced by the simple ‘Concertino’ in the end. The first performance took place on 16.2.1926 in Brno at a concert of the Moravian Composers´ Club, and the composition was a great success – the whole of it even had to be repeated. Concertino was equally successful at its first performance in Prague in the same year, after which the composition immediately flew almost all around the world. It was performed at (among other places) the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Frankfurt in 1927.

At the request of the German specialized journal Pult und Taktstock, Janáček wrote a guide to the composition programme in 1927. In the first movement, a hedgehog is angry as the door to his den in an old linden tree was closed. The second movement is about a squirrel which used to jump around in the trees and but ended up dancing in a cage for the enjoyment of children. In the third movement, the staring eyes of owls and other critical denizens of the night are gazing at piano strings, and in the fourth movement it looks as if everyone is arguing over a coin – just like in a fairy tale.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

An integral part of Janáček´s interests was the support and collection of songs that I call sacred, popular or folk spiritual. Janáček chose to collaborate with (among other people) Hynek Bím in his research into folk songs. Bím’s task was to map western Moravia, and it was Bím who got hold of a collection of old church songs during his repeated collections in the village of Vnorovy. He paid a lot of attention to them despite the fact that they were only a small part of the total number of songs he recorded (as evidenced by the sixteen letters of correspondence between him and Janáček in which he deals with this topic). After all, it was in Vnorovy that Janáček found refuge with his uncle Jan Janáček (who worked as a pastor there from 1870-1878) after his father’s untimely death in 1866. He probably got to know the local spiritual songs in person, as he played the organ at the Vnorovy church gallery during his time there.

The focus of the songs is directly linked to the church year. Some of them can be found in the hymn book Slavíček rájský by Jan Josef Božan from 1719, which was the basic comparative material still used at the Vnorovy parish church services at the time of collection in 1911. Bím wrote down (and partially also recorded on a phonograph) songs for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and the celebration of the saints, as well as songs whose content is related to events in Christian life.

The programme “Church songs from Vnorovy” will, at least partially, reveal this still undiscovered pearl of folk music culture which until now has remained off the radar for folk music lovers. The selection of songs will allow us to look back one hundred years at a repertoire deeply rooted in the musical and pious environment of this village in the Slovácko region. A more intimate environment would be suitable for the programme, preferably a religious one. Selected singing soloists, as well as choirs from Vnorovy and its surroundings, perform with an organ, chamber instrument or a capella accompaniment. It might be worth considering making a recording of this exceptional occasion…

Author: Magdalena Múčková