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JANACEK: Violin Sonata / Capriccio / Romance / Dumka

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JANACEK: Violin Sonata / Capriccio / Romance / Dumka

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Leos Janaček (1854 -1928) Violin Sonata Romance Dumka Allegro Capriccio for Piano left-hand, Flute/Piccolo, Two Trumpets, Three Trombones and Tenor...

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Leos Janaček (1854 -1928)

Violin Sonata

Romance

Dumka

Allegro

Capriccio for Piano left-hand,

Flute/Piccolo, Two Trumpets, Three Trombones and Tenor Tuba

Czech music in the course of the nineteenth century was left largely to three composers: Smetana (encouraged by Liszt), Dvořak (championed by Brahms), and Janaček (unknown to anyone). Janaček, a humble Moravian from Brno, began as a trail-blazing teacher and nature-loving folklorist. He ended by becoming one of the most creative and lastingly original operatic forces of the twentieth century. Discovered late (not until his sixties, with the 1916 Prague production of Jenůfa), his pioneering of "speech-melody", based on the rise and fall and rhythms of his native tongue, gave him the distinguishing musical soundprint of his lifework. "If speech-melody," he wrote in 1918, "is the flower of a water-lily, it nevertheless buds and blossoms and drinks from the roots, which wander in the waters of the mind". "I don't need to understand the words," his Brno student, the conductor Vilem Tausky, remembered him saying. "I can tell by the tempo and modulation of speech how a man feels; if he lies, or if it is just a conventional conversation. I have been collecting these speech rhythms for years, and I have an immense dictionary.

These are my windows into the soul of man, and when I need to find a dramatic expression I have recourse to my library". "Janaček's creation was life, and to live was to create", his biographer Jaroslav Vogel has written (1962). "He composed permanently-in the streets, at the market, during his morning walks... He even composed during his classes..." The older he got the younger his art became, transcending its romantic roots through the radical economy, cellular modernity and non- conformity of its conception. The energy was unstoppable, the inventive cocktail endless.

On 15th August, 1919 Janaček was in Hukvaldy, the mountain village in North Moravia where he had been born. In an essay that day, written as he sat "lost in my dreams" among the beeches and limes of the old castle, he ventured to describe the moment of inspiration, of creation. He called it Silence:

The Violin Sonata in A flat (G sharp) minor (1914- 21), first performed in Brno in 1922 before being heard the following year at the second Salzburg ISCM Festival, belongs among the most radica1ly imagined utterances ever conceived for such a relatively traditional medium. Fo1lowing the first draft ("I wrote [it] at the beginning of the War when we were expecting the Russians in Moravia"), it went through a further two revisions before reaching its final (considerably altered) form in 1921. Comparison of the 1914 and 1921 versions shows that originally the present Adagio finale was the second movement; that the Balada (published separately in 1915 with an ending in C sharp major rather than the contrived minor guise of its sonata context) was the third; and that the finale had been quite different - a Con moto, Tempo di marcia, not only quoting cyclically from the opening movement and the Adagio but also featuring a main idea in D flat presaging that of the Knighťs Theme from the symphonic poem The Ballad of Blanik (1920). Prefaced by a short unaccompanied violin improvisation, the first movement is a taut, quasi monothematic sonata design, with a formal exposition repeat. Tripartite structures underline the Balada (nocturne) and Allegretto (scherzo) - characterised in the former by a developmental rather than literal reprise; and in the latter by the contrast of a simple Katya Kabanova-like modal song with a harmonically richer (slower) middle section. The closing G sharp minor Adagio is another broadly monothematic structure, with only a very terse second subject in the major. Its recapitulation is striking for the way the opening chorale theme, originally given to piano, is transferred to the violin with a harmonically and texturally new background of agitated keyboard tremolos symbolic, according to the composer, of "the Russian armies entering Hungary" (26th September, 1914). Janaček always had a liking for the Adagio and Balada.

in them, he maintained, was "some truth".

A number of works are lost from Janaček's youth and his brief period as a student at the Leipzig Conservatory - among them an orchestral scherzo for a symphony, seventeen fugues for piano, and pairs of sonatas for piano, and violin and piano (1879-80). The Mendelssohnian E major Romance (November 1879) was originally No. 4 of a set of seven (the others have disappeared). Writing to his child sweetheart, Zdenka Schulzova, Janaček claimed that "here, at last, I have expressed my joy, my Zdenci, my happiness". The piece is in ternary form, with an introduction that comes back at the end. The Dumka (1880) and Allegro (undated) tap veins of melancholy and energy variously Slavonic in root but occasionally more widely European. This is not music without defect, but it has a place in our understanding of Janaček's strange genius. As his composition pupil, the pianist Rudolf Firkusn�, reminds us, "the why was [always] more interesting to him than the what".

Contemporary with the pagan, festive Sinfonietta, the Capriccio for piano (Ieft hand), flute/piccolo, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba (June-October 1926) was the second of Janaček's two piano chamber concertos. A gritty, challenging, demanding, quirky piece that seems to travel from darkness to light, from illusions of marches and waltzes, expanses of resigned, frozen wastes, and echoes of "gallows-humour", to a promised land of regeneration and blazing D flat hope, it was commissioned by Otakar Hollmann, who had lost the use of his right arm during the Great War.

What inspired it (or its peculiar scoring) has never been adequately explained, "You know, to write merely for the left hand would hove been childishly gratuitous," Janaček told Hollmann, "More reasons were necessary - subjective and objective, When all these were present and clashed, the work came into existence", Butwhat were those subjective reasons? How, for instance, does Defiance (the work's intended subtitle) equate with Janaček's view (in 1928) that "it is capricious, nothing but gratuitousness and puns"? And how does the fourth movement's hymn-like peroration, or the relationship of its cadenza to the "Crucifixus" organ cadenza of the Glagolitic Mass, relate to caprice? Czech scholarly reception has advanced many theories, "A protest against the senselessness and horrors of war [the piano personifying] a victim ,., who continues to wage an untiring struggle" (Burghauser). "An expression of peace and contentment at the time of[the composer's] affection for Kamila [Stosslova, the love of his old age, 38 years younger] and of defiance against the opinion of the rest of the worlď' (Stědroň).

A reflection - through "the sometimes pugnacious, sometimes embittered, ironical, nostalgic ...sceptical character of the first three movements [and] the brighter mood of the last" - of Janaček's "struggle as a man and a composer" (Vogel). Interesting insights, certainly, even grains of truth perhaps. But no more. The enigma remains.

Ates Orga

From Janaček: Leaves from his life, edited & translated by Vilem & Margaret Tausky (Kahn & Averill, London 1982), reprinted by kind permission

Thomas Hlawatsch

The Austrian-born Thomas Hlawatsch began his study of the piano at the age of five, continuing his training in Vienna at the Musikhochschule, where he also undertook studies in composition. A winner of various prizes, including the 1989 Vienna International Piano Competition, he has appeared as a soloist in concerts at home and abroad, with broadcasts, television appearances and recordings. His repertoire extends from the classical to the contemporary.

Iidiko Line

Ildiko Line is an outstanding exponent of the Transylvanian school of violin-playing. Born in Brasov, she had her early training under Victor Tersanu, a pupil of Carl Flesch. She continued her studies at the Cluj Academy of Music, subsequently joining the Philharmonic Orchestra in Oradea and then in Cluj. Since 1980 she has led the Pro Camera Quartet of the Cluj Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1989 she settled in Budapest. becoming leader of the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, moving in 1992 to a similar position with the Budapest Radio Orchestra. At the same time she enjoys a career as a soloist and as a leader of chamber ensembles, with performances throughout Europe.

Tamas Benedek

Tamas Benedek was educated in Budapest, where he studied the violin for twelve years before turning to the clarinet. After completing his musical studies at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in 1968, he appeared as soloist in Germany, Netherlands and Sweden. For the past twenty years he has enjoyed a second career as conductor, serving as music director at a number of theatres in Germany .His recordings include works by Mozart, Haydn, Donizetti, Dvoř3k, Tchaikovsky and Arvo Part.

Disc 1

Sonata for Violin and Piano

(more info)

Composed by: Leos Janacek
Conducted by: Tamas Benedek
Thomas Hlawatsch, piano
Ildiko Line, violin
Produced by: Benedek, Tamas

Con moto - 5:51
Balada; Con moto - 4:56
Allegretto - 2:54
Adagio - 5:34

Romance

(more info)

Composed by: Leos Janacek
Conducted by: Tamas Benedek
Thomas Hlawatsch, piano
Ildiko Line, violin
Produced by: Benedek, Tamas

Romance - 5:12

Dumka

(more info)

Composed by: Leos Janacek
Conducted by: Tamas Benedek
Thomas Hlawatsch, piano
Ildiko Line, violin
Produced by: Benedek, Tamas

Dumka - 6:22

Allegro

(more info)

Composed by: Leos Janacek
Conducted by: Tamas Benedek
Thomas Hlawatsch, piano
Ildiko Line, violin
Produced by: Benedek, Tamas

Allegro - 3:25

Capriccio for Piano Left-Hand and Chamber Orchestra

(more info)

Composed by: Leos Janacek
Conducted by: Tamas Benedek
Istvan Racz, flute
Sandor Szabo,
Thomas Hlawatsch, piano
Zsolt Czegledi, trumpet
Istvan Racz, piccolo
Balazs Kerenyi, trombone
Tibor Koszorus, trombone
Istvan Racz, flute
Sandor Szabo, trombone
Tibor Koszorus,
Istvan Somorjai, trumpet
Balazs Kerenyi,
Istvan Balint, tuba
Produced by: Benedek, Tamas

Allegro - 5:19
Adagio - 5:42
Allegretto - 4:18
Andante - 6:36

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Composer(s):
Janacek, Leos

Conductor(s):
Benedek, Tamas

Artist(s):
Balint, Istvan; Czegledi, Zsolt; Hlawatsch, Thomas; Kerenyi, Balazs; Kerenyi, Balazs; Koszorus, Tibor; Koszorus, Tibor; Line, Ildiko; Racz, Istvan; Racz, Istvan; Racz, Istvan; Somorjai, Istvan; Szabo, Sandor; Szabo, Sandor

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099458825
Item Number: 8553588
Release Date: Mar 1, 1999