Leoš Janáček: Violin & Piano Works

Album Notes

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) is regarded as one of the most important composers of the early 20th century. His operas and symphonic work are widely known, while his chamber music invites equally close attention. Pianist Giulio Potenza said that the impulse to make these recordings “…came around three years ago when I started to work on the piano sonata. It was a huge discovery and I felt that I had to dig much deeper into his repertoire.” The selection of pieces showcased on this disc represents every era of Janáček’s output, from the very early Zdenka Variations to the Violin Sonata completed 42 years later. These works were chosen by Potenza to show how Janáček’s musical voice – especially in the chamber works – developed continuously from the Zdenka Variations. Included, too, are some of Janáček’s works for violin and piano (performed by violinist Nicolas Dupont) because, as Potenza says “I chose to include the violin sonata and Dumka in the same CD to offer a bigger perspective to the listener and give them a better idea of Janáček’s musical world.” These two works also bookend the chronological span of this disc’s collection, with the Dumka pre-dating the Zdenka Variations by about a year, and the Violin Sonata being completed in 1922.

The Dumka for violin and piano of 1879-1880 was written sometime while Janáček was studying abroad in either Leipzig or Vienna. Janáček left Brno on 1 October 1879, after becoming engaged in August to the just-turned fourteen-year-old Zdenka Schulzová, to study at the conservatory in Leipzig. During this time, he had a slew of composition teachers with various successes and failures amongst the cities and conservatories he studied in. The Dumka is characteristic of much of Janáček’s output, having folkloric elements infused throughout the music. This touching, romantic work may have been one of a handful of Romances the composer wrote while in Leipzig for violin and piano, the rest being lost. It was premiered in 1885 at a benefit concert for the Brno Organ School, with the composer at the piano.

Potenza remarks, “the music of Janáček is characterized by strong musical contrasts and mood swings,” and the Zdenka Variations demonstrate this with full-throated clarity. These variations written for solo piano are infused with love and youthful energy. Janáček wrote to Zdenka on 19 February 1880 that “…wenn man weiß, das seine Arbeit vollkommen ist, dann fühlt man eine wahre Freude daran” (“…if one knows a work is perfect, then he feels a real joy.”). The next day, in another letter to Zdenka, he dedicates the work to her, writing “…u[nd] sollten sie je gedruckt werden, so sollen sie Deinen lieben Namen tragen” (…“and should they [the Variations] ever be published, they will bear your dear name.”). Composed as a theme and variations exercise for his teacher Leo Grill at the Leipzig Conservatoire, Janáček got his theme on 29 January 1880. He recounts in a letter that morning to Zdenka, “I thought of the theme in my bed, I jumped up, threw my watch down on the ground, but the theme stayed with me…it is nice and will vary well.” We can hear, even in this very early work, much of the emotionally charged gestures that characterize his entire oeuvre.

The Piano Sonata 1. X. 1905 is a passionate, politically charged work written in response to a protest that turned deadly in Brno, between German and Czech nationals on 1 and 2 October 1905. When the work was premiered on 27 January, 1906, the advertisement for the concert read Z ulice dne 1. října 1905 (From the street on 1 October 1905). The first movement is titled Předtucha (Foreboding), and the second movement, although originally titled Elegie, is now known as Smrt (Death). The day of the premiere, Janáček burnt the manuscript of the third movement, reportedly a funeral march, and after the second performance, he threw the rest of the manuscript in the river Vltava. Ludmila T učková, the pianist who premiered the sonata, had made a copy of the work and announced her manuscript’s existence in 1924. She performed it for Janáček during his 70th birthday celebrations, and thereafter, he inscribed on the score: Bílý mramor schodiště / Besedního domu v Brně – – – Klesá tu zbrocen krví / prostý dělník Frant. Pavlík – – – Přišel jen horovat za vysoké učení – a byl ubit surovými vrahy. (The white marble steps / of the Besední dům in Brno – – – The ordinary worker František Pavlík falls / covered in blood – – – He came to champion higher learning – and he was beaten by brutal murderers.)

A piano cycle in four movements, In the mists was written in 1912. Considered one of his finest works for solo piano, the collection of four unnamed movements bears a title evocative of the ‘misty’ atmosphere created by the distant – five or six flats – key signatures of each movement. By the time these works were written, Janáček had lost both of his children, seen minimal success as a composer outside of Brno, and was wracked with self-doubt and rheumatism – all despite his success in Brno as a composer and musicologist and his complex relationship with Zdenka. The first movement, in his favorite key of D-flat, is suffused with melancholy, storminess, and resignation. The second movement is similarly afloat in misty uncertainty. The third movement’s melodic fragments long for answers and are only responded to with an agitated outburst in the middle section – resignation inevitably follows. The last movement makes particular use of Moravian folk music, and ties the previous three movements together through motivic connections and a rhythmically complex discourse. T ogether, all four movements amount to a proscenium on which Janáček’s introspection, self-doubt, frustration, and loss play out their intertwined dramas. Pianist Marie Dvořáková premiered the work in Kroměříž on 7 December, 1913.

“I wrote the Violin Sonata in 1914 at the beginning of the war when we were expecting the Russians in Moravia” Janáček recalled in correspondence with a musicologist in 1922. As Janáček’s career started to blossom internationally, the Great War intervened. The war is present throughout much of the work, except the second movement, titled “Ballada.” This movement, a separate, earlier work, was added to the sonata during revisions in 1922, the year the sonata finally received its premiere. Karel Šolc – the pianist who prepared the final version of the sonata for its second performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Salzburg – recounted that Janáček insisted the tremolos in the final statement of the theme in the fourth movement be as violent and agitated as possible. Here, as in other sections of the sonata, the war aggressively agitates at the edge of the work’s psychology. Many of the themes in the sonata are sourced not only from the Moravian folk music Janáček knew so well, but from Russian themes he deployed in other works such as the opera Katya Kabanova and the Ballad of Blaník. In 1915, an early version of the sonata was sent to the violinist Jaroslav Kocián who rejected it, and, in response, Janáček recounted, “…I don’t consider it to be an exceptional work but there is some truth in the second and third movements.” Jaroslav Vogel, in his analysis of the work, adds to Janáček’s remarks that, “…the same can be said of the other two movements.” This disc argues further still that the same can be said for all of Janáček’s music. While the orchestral and operatic output is highly regarded, the outer, ‘peripheral’ works – like this remarkable collection of chamber music – are similarly laced with striking honesty, an undeniable creativity, excesses of passion, and a tender intimacy.

Notes by Evan Kassof. English edited; obvious historical errors corrected.

Recording credits

Nicolas Dupont, violin; Giulio Potenza, piano. Recorded at Velut Luna Studio, Preganziol, Italy, in 2017. Sound engineering: Marco Lincetto.

Violin: Giuseppe Petrazzini, Milan, 1920, generously lent by a sponsor. Piano: Steinway & Sons D274, New York, 1928, prepared by Silvano Zanta. Cover photograph: Damiano Rosa. Production, design and art direction: OMK–Da Vinci. Printed with the support of S.P.L.M. ℗ and © OMK–Da Vinci Classics. DDD; manufactured in Japan.