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Co-production between The National Theatre Brno and Opera Gothenburg.

Janáček completed his seventh opera, The Makropulos Affair, in 1925, when he was 71. But why did he choose Čapek’s play, which at first sight appears so thematically different from all of Janáček’s other operas? It seems to have been from a need to reflect on a life nearing its end and the meaning of life and death. This can already be seen in The Cunning Little Vixen, where death goes hand in hand with birth. Janáček’s pantheistic outlook is obvious here: nature has its own order and, though it may appear cruel, it is the only conceivable and logical one. The Makropulos Affair examines what would happen if this order were artificially tampered with. For someone who has lived to be 300 years old, life becomes unbearable. Faith and the meaning of existence are lost. To outward appearances, such a person becomes a faultless personality, but inwardly they are transformed into a kind of monster. It would appear that the premiere of Čapek’s play arrived at precisely the right time and coincided with the composer’s own thoughts. The premiere of the opera took place at the Brno National Theatre in the City Theatre building (today’s Mahen Theatre) on December 26 1929 and met with great success. This was partly due to the excellent staging by the conductor František Neumann, the director Ota Zítek and Alexandra Čvanová in the lead role (who, incidentally, took on this role at only 29 years of age). What is it that continues to fascinate us about this opera today? No doubt there is its modernity and exclusive setting, where people use cars and telephones, but it also has the mystery and tension of a well-constructed detective story. However, its success is mainly due to the brilliance of Janáček’s music and his ability as a composer to perfectly combine words and music into one unique operatic whole.

foto: Barbora Ponešová

Orchestra of the Janáček Opera of the Brno National Theatre
Chorus of the Janáček Opera of the Brno National Theatre
Brno Philharmonic Chorus of the Brno Beseda  

LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)
The Eternal Gospel
Con moto
Adagio
Con moto
Andante

LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)
Glagolitic Mass
September 1927 version – editor Jiří Zahrádka
Intrada
Introduction
Lord have mercy
Glory to God
I believe
Holy, holy         
Lamb of God
Organ solo
Intrada  

Jaroslav Kyzlink – conductor
Josef Pančík – choirmaster
Petr Kolař – organ  
Maria Kobielska – soprano
Magdalena Kožená – alto
Michal Lehotský – tenor
Gustáv Beláček – bass
Lenka Koplová – solo violin

It’s the fifth of December 1927, and in the hall of the Brno Stadion the premiere of perhaps the 20th century’s most important spiritual composition, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, is taking place. The composer had begun work on it in 1920, but he soon abandoned the composition and did not return to the piece until 1926. The new impetus was a meeting with the Archbishop of Olomouc, Dr Leopold Prečan, at the unveiling of a memorial plaque on the house in Hukvaldy where Janáček had been born. During this ceremonial event, the Archbishop had loyally stood beside the Maestro in spite of the extremely bad weather. Then, in August of the same year, Janáček more or less wrote the whole of the mass over a period of three weeks in Luhačovice.

The Philharmonic Society of the Brno Beseda expressed an interest in giving the first performance of the Glagolitic Mass when they discussed the programme for the subscription and regular concerts at a committee meeting on 21 December 1926, adding Janáček’s new work to the programme for the fourth regular concert under the title of “Missa solemnis”.

The rehearsals culminated in the second half of November, with the final rehearsal being held on the morning of Sunday 4 December 1927 in the hall of the exhibition pavilion at the Brno Stadion. This multifunctional hall had been built as recently as 1924 and had a large stage. Shortly after it opened, the Brno Conservatory furnished it with a large organ made by Wilhelm Sauer in 1885, which had originally been housed in the concert hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum.

In certain passages of the Glagolitic Mass Janáček had originally included pedal timpani, so the Brno Beseda had to borrow timpani for the concert from the Brno National Theatre, the Conservatory and the Orchestral Association. The concert at which Janáček’s new Missa glagolskaja was performed was held at the Stadion on 5 December 1927 at 8pm. Taking part were Alexandra Čvanová, Marie Hloušková, Stanislav Tauber and Ladislav Němeček, the organist Bohumil Holub, the 140-strong chorus of the Brno Beseda and the National Theatre Orchestra conducted by Jaroslav Kvapil. Jaroslav Křička’s cantata Temptation in the Wilderness was performed in the first part of the concert. Archbishop Leopold Prečan, who had essentially initiated the work and to whom Janáček dedicated the piece in April 1928, was also invited to the event. However, he excused himself due to illness, as did other representatives of the Catholic Church. The concert, which was also broadcast on radio, was a great success, as is testified by a critic of the time, who referred to the idiosyncratic working of the mass’s text, which Janáček “approached entirely in his own way: simply without tradition, or even against tradition”. From the reviews it is clear that the composition made a very strong impression. After this concert, Janáček significantly modified the Glagolitic Mass. At the premiere an Intrada was also played before the Introduction (however, it was not Janáček himself who initiated this change). The Introduction was written in a single multi-metre layer of groups of sevenths, while in the movement Lord have mercy Janáček used a quintuple metre. The movement I believe underwent the biggest changes, with the middle section being reworked and the areas with pedal timpani deleted. In addition, Janáček also carried out dozens of other smaller revisions to the instrumentation as well as to the choral elements throughout the score. Today we will be able to hear the work as it sounded at that first performance on 5 December 1927.

Janáček’s spiritual cantata The Eternal Gospel from 1914 was based on a text by his contemporary and, to a degree, spiritual kindred spirit, the poet Jaroslav Vrchlický. The story, written in verse, was called The Eternal Gospel – Legend 1240 from the collection Frescoes and Tapestries published in 1891. It was inspired by the teachings of the medieval monk Joachim of Fiore (1132–1202), whose interpretation of history culminates with the period of the Holy Spirit, or the love of all humanity towards every creature. It is quite symbolic that Janáček set this prophecy to music just before the outbreak of World War I. We do not know exactly when the composition was written, but the first evidence of the existence of the completed work comes from May 1914, when the editor Artuš Rektorys informed Janáček of his discussions with Otakar Ostrčil concerning the performance of the work and recommended that the work be performed by the Hlahol chorus in Prague. In Janáček’s Eternal Gospel the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore are divided into four sections with an emphasis on the tenor part and the chorus. Musically, The Eternal Gospel is closely linked, and not only in terms of instrumentation, with the opera The Excursions of Mr Brouček. The premiere finally took place on 5 February 1917 in a performance by the Prague choral ensemble Hlahol and the orchestra of the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Jaroslav Křička.

Jiří Zahrádaka

HFvyska

Bohuslav Martinů: Suite from Ballet Kitchen Revue
Prolog (Allegretto-Marche)
Tango (Lento)
Charleston (Poco a poco Allegro)
Final (Tempo di Marcia)

Conductor: doc. Vít Spilka
Clarinet: Lukáš Dittrich
Bassoon: Klaudie Jurmanová 
Trumpet: Miloš Macháň
Violin: Jan Rybka
Violoncello: Lukáš Svoboda 
Piano: Tereza Plešáková

Erwin Schulhoff: Step
Edgard Varèse: Ionisation

Department of Percussion Instruments of doc. Martin Opršál

LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)
Moravian Folk Poetry in Song
Love Letter
Doubt
Little Feather
Little Bench
A Lover’s Radiance
Constancy
A Lover’s Picture
The Mayor’s Daughter
Fidelity
Who’s the flower for?

Featuring: Jana Jelínková, Irina Shevchuk, Jana Vondrů, Tadeáš Hoza.

JAN NOVÁK (1921–1984)
Three Inventions
Allegro
Andante
Vivace

Violin: Barbora Kozáková
Violin: Karel Svačina
Viola: Jitka Svačinová
Cello: Petr Osička

Scenario and staging of project: Zuzana Fischerová

Students of HF JAMU are participating in the project

The Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts has a reputation as an institute which trains top-class interpreters of classical music. However, to prevent this description from being taken too seriously, JAMU decided to give Maestro Janáček a slightly more humorous “musical gift” for his 160th birthday. The Seriously Unserious Exhibition is the musical equivalent of a museum exhibition. For those who are interested, it offers musical “exhibits” which are made special by the unconventional surroundings and atmosphere of the whole event.

The opening of the musical “exhibition” takes place at the assembly hall of JAMU’s Music Faculty and the first “musical exhibit” will be the suite from the ballet The Kitchen Revue by Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), the most important Czech composer of the 20th century after Janáček. The thirty-seven-year-old composer wrote the Kitchen Revue ballet when he was living in Paris and was intoxicated, almost consumed, by the jazz which was coming to Europe from the American continent. The Kitchen Revue was written at Easter 1927 and was first performed in the same year at Prague’s Rudolfinum by the J Kröschlová ballet ensemble (Kröschlová being the author of the scenario). Paradoxically, the ballet suite enjoyed more popularity than the original ballet version. Even though the suite is an abridged version and contains only four of the original ten parts, the selection naturally contains all the musical gems. The opening Prologue (Allegretto – Marche) switches to the slow Tango (Lento), magically paraphrasing Ravel’s famous Bolero, which is followed by the rhythmically stirring Charleston (Poco a poco allegro), and the suite comes to a close with a strident march Finale (Tempo di marcia).

Further “musical exhibits” will be located in parts of the Music Faculty’s premises which are not normally used for public performances. These exhibits are variable, so our audience members are kindly asked to read the following paragraphs in the order appropriate to the situation at the time.

The vaulted hall in the newly reconstructed underground space of the Music Faculty is practically unknown to the public. It is the home of the teachers and students of percussion instruments, who will perform works by two composers who were contemporaries of Leoš Janáček. Like Martinů, the Czech composer of German-Jewish origin Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942) had been captivated by jazz for a long time. It was one of his most expressive compositional tools and was characteristic of his earlier work. Jazz also influenced his graceful Suite for Chamber Orchestra from 1921, one part of which was entitled Step. This short, rhythmically expressive work has a special status in the six parts of the suite as it was written solely for percussion instruments.

The Frenchman Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) spent most of his life in the USA. In his work he focused on the sound characteristics of music, which he developed by using new instruments, varying their location within the environment, and so on. This approach was a breakthrough in the way music was understood at the time. The composition Ionisation from 1931 was written for 13 percussionists and 37 instruments in total (two sirens and a piano that the composer used as a percussion instrument). Working with different rhythmic variations represents the ionization of molecules, which gives the composition its name.

The classroom space on the first floor was built as a miniature stage, and because of its room number it became known as Nine. Here students work on their theatre projects. As part of the Musical Exhibition there will be “song exhibits” from the workshop of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), which present him as a lover of folk song. The collection Moravian Folk Poetry in Song reflects the composer’s passion for collecting folk melodies from the forgotten corners of the globe, which the composer wanted to preserve for future generations.

The Musical Exhibition also offers listeners an unconventional performance by a string quartet in the open area of JAMU’s staircase. Here you can listen to Three Inventions by Jan Novák (1921–1984), one of the most prominent composers in Brno in the second half of the 20th century. Apart from Vítězslava Kaprálová, Jan Novák was the only student of Bohuslav Martinů who consciously emulated him in his composition. The Latin language was of fundamental importance for the composer’s compositional style. Novák studied Latin, translated into Latin, wrote his own poetry and composed instrumental music based on its meter. The Three Inventions for String Quartet were most likely written between 1960 and 1968. The composition is made up of three independent movements (Allegro – Andante – Vivace), which are partially linked by the use of characteristic intervals of seconds and thirds.

Monika Holá

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Concert with an introductory talk by leading musicologists (Prof. Miloš Štědroň, Prof. John Tyrrell, PhDr. Jiří Zahrádka, Ph.D.)

The two string quartets by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) represent some of the greatest music of the 20th century, and of all time. They were written by a composer who was already experienced and mature, recognized both at home and abroad, and both quartets share the theme of love. The String Quartet no. 2 “Intimate Letters”, the last of Janáček’s completed works, is the musical parallel to the love letters which the composer had been writing since 1917 to the object of his desire, Kamila Stösslová from Písek, who was 37 years his junior. Janáček completed this ardent and stormy confession, originally for the viola d’amore, on 19 February 1928 as Love Letters – however, a day later he changed the title to Intimate Letters because he did not want to advertise his feelings to the public quite so openly. The first letter describes “the first fateful meeting” with Kamila, the second is the “music of confession”, the third expresses Janáček’s “sweetest longing” and the fourth – with the composer’s unflagging energy – its defiant fulfilment.
The work was written over only 22 days, during which he also sent letters to Kamila describing his ebullient work. “You know that sometimes feeling itself can be so powerful and strong that the music hides and flees beneath it. Great love – poor composition. Whereas what I would like is: Great love – glorious composition.” And that was what he created.
The work took on its definitive character in May and June 1928 during rehearsals with the Moravian Quartet, who had also brought to life Janáček’s first quartet. Although the composer did not live to hear the premiere of his work by the Moravian Quartet on 11 September 1928 in Brno, he did hear its final form after two months of rehearsals and he was extremely pleased with it.
The performance by the renowned Graffe Quartet will be complemented by fascinating insights from leading musicologists: Prof. Miloš Štědron, Prof. John Tyrrell and Dr. Jiří Zahrádka.

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Although Jenůfa represents the very beginning of the composer’s journey towards a modern and distinctive form of musical drama, it is his most frequently performed opera (a similar situation to that of Benjamin Britten and his early opera Peter Grimes). Work on Jenůfa placed great demands on Janáček. He found the subject matter for his opera in a play by the young writer Gabriela Preissová which was controversial in its day. The story of the tragic fate of a young woman which is brought about by the prejudices of the time was evidently in keeping with Janáček’s social conscience. In choosing Preissová’s play, however, he also chose a work of prose, which he was the very first composer to employ in an opera. Work on the composition took him a full nine years, starting in 1894. However, it was frequently interrupted because of his enormous workload at the schools where he taught. He completed the opera as his beloved daughter Olga was dying, at the beginning of 1903. The uncertainty associated with the new approach to composition, this tragic event in his personal life and the subsequent rejection of the opera by the Prague National Theatre placed a huge psychological strain on the composer. In the end the premiere was taken on by Brno and its Czech National Theatre. It took place in a now-defunct theatre building on Veveří Street on January 21 1904 under the baton of C. M. Hrazdira. Although, in view of the limitations of its time, the staging was rather rudimentary, it enjoyed great success. Janáček then went on to rework the opera into its present form in 1906 and 1907. After the Prague (1916) and then Viennese premiere (1918) the work was taken up across the world and it remains one of the most frequently performed operas of the 20th century.

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Chamber Opera of the Music Faculty of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, Brno

Composer: Leoš Janáček

Libreto: Leoš Janáček

Conductor: Nikol Kraft

Director: David Kříž

Set and costume design: Sylva Marková 

Videoart: Jakub Kříž

Choirmaster: Klára Roztočilová

Choirmaster – Children´s choir: Valéria Maťašová 

Students of production of the opera: Michaela Bóková, Michal Grombiřík, Mária Žilecká

CAST:

Forester: Jiří Miroslav Procházka,  Jan Kučera

Forester’s wife: Kateřina Hloušková, Pavla Radostová

Schoolmaster: Vít Habernal, Otakar Souček

Priest: Martin Frýbort, David Szendiuch

Harašta: Jiří Ullrich, Petr Karas

Pásek: Jiří Ullrich, a choir member

Vixen: Marta Reichelová, Aneta Ručková, Zdislava Bočková

Mrs. Pásková: Klára Varmužová, Eliška Ouředníčková, Pavla Mlčáková

Fox: Romana Jedličková, Jana Melišková, Jana Jelínková

Frantík: Jana Vondrů, Eliška Ouředníčková

Pepík: Monika Kaštanová, Pavla Mlčáková

Lapák: Kateřina Hloušková, Pavla Radostová, Jarmila Balážová

Rooster: Irina Shevchuk, Ivana Pavlů

Hen: Mária Havriláková, Barbora Čechová

Woodpecker: Jarmila Balážová, Pavla Radostová

Mosquito: Vít Habernal, Otakar Souček

Badger: Martin Frýbort, David Szendiuch

Owl: Irina Shevchuk, Ivana Pavlů, Mária Havrilaková

Jay: Jana Vondrů, Monika Kaštanová

The Cunning Little Vixen

On November 6 of this year we celebrated 90 years since the premiere of Janáček’s “forest idyll”, the opera The Cunning Little Vixen. “I captured Vixen Sharp-Ears for the forest and the sorrow of later years,” wrote Janáček to his muse Kamila Stösslová. And indeed it is the masterpiece of the composer’s old age, written when he was almost in his seventies. The start of the composer’s interest in this subject matter goes back to the year 1920, when his housekeeper Mařa drew his attention to the tales of the crafty vixen from the pen of Rudolf Těsnohlídek, which were being serialized in the newspaper Lidové noviny. However, another two years elapsed before he set to work on it. In the meantime he studied nature, noted down the “speech melodies” of birds and frogs, and observed a family of foxes. His transformation of Těsnohlídek’s novella into an opera libretto was very effective; he shifted the political satire and the historical context into the background and instead built the whole story around the simple tale of the vixen, the forest’s inhabitants and human figures from the area around Brno, with an emphasis on the justice of the natural order, determined by a higher power, and the beginning and end of (not only human) life. The premiere took place in the City Theatre in Brno on November 5 1924, directed by Ota Zítek, with brilliant costumes by Eduard Milén, in a concise musical rendition by František Neumann. These days the work is performed literally all over the world and finds an audience across the generations, from young people to their parents and grandparents.

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ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Fanfares for the Festive Opening of the Jubilee Exhibition in Prague (1891)

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)
Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra
Allegro moderato – Allegro
Andante – attacca
Allegro molto

MARC-ANDRÉ DALBAVIE (1961)
Variations on a theme by Janáček

strong>LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928) Sinfonietta     
Allegretto (Fanfare)
Andante (Hrad, Brno)
Moderato (The Queen’s Monastery, Brno)
Allegretto (The Street Leading to the Castle)
Andante con moto (The Town Hall, Brno)

Denis Kozhukhin – piano
Aleksandar Marković –conductor

This concert will get off to a suitably festive start – with fanfares, which, although written by Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), will be unfamiliar to listeners. Dvořák wrote the Fanfares for four trumpets and timpani for the opening of the Jubilee Exhibition held in Prague in 1891. From six o’clock in the morning on 15 May, the day of the exhibition opening, the fanfares sounded from Prague’s towers, and on the same day, during the gala opening of the exhibition, they were played from the gallery of the entrance gate to the exhibition grounds. Unlike Dvořák’s musical notes, which called for four trumpeters, for the exhibition their number was raised to sixteen. An interesting feature of the fanfares is the almost identical form of the basic timpani figure to the children’s nursery rhyme “Ho, ho, there the cows go” and the almost identical melodic outline to the Austrian imperial anthem.

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) wrote of his First Piano Concerto, “Over the last year I’ve been studying music prior to Bach and I imagine some traces of that can be seen, for example, in my Piano Concerto…” Bartók worked on it from August until November 1926 and eventually he was the first to perform it under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler. The premiere took place in July 1927 at the International Contemporary Music Society festival in Frankfurt It is interesting to note that he personally played this new work in Prague in 1927 with the Czech Philharmonic. The composer also engaged in lengthy discussions about the work with Leoš Janáček. Bartók and Janáček shared an interest in folk music, which was a strong source of inspiration for both of them.

The French composer Marc-André Dalbavie (1961) was commissioned to write a new work by the prestigious Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Dalbavie wrote the twenty-minute Variations on a Theme by Janáček for this concert hall and personally conducted the premiere there in 2006. Dalbavie dedicated the composition to the composer Henri Dutilleux. The Variations have also been performed by the famous Orchestre de Paris. The Janáček theme was borrowed from the piano cycle In the Mists. It is also worth noting that Dalbavie was inspired by Janáček in his Sinfonietta.

And it is in fact Leoš Janáček’s (1854–1928) Sinfonietta which brings the Brno Philharmonic’s concert to a close. Janáček completed it in 1926, and it proved to be his last orchestral work. The composition was dedicated to Václav Talich and was first conducted by him as part of the 8th Sokol Rally in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic on 26 June of the same year in the Municipal House. The concert was broadcast on radio. The critics rated the Sinfonietta alongside the symphonic rhapsody Taras Bulba as the pinnacles of Janáček’s orchestral work, an evaluation which remains true to this day. On 4 December 1927 Janáček’s article Meine Stadt was published in the Prager Presse and it was published in Czech on 24 December of the same year as Moje město (My City). In this short text Janáček wrote about the milestones in his life from childhood experiences from the period of the Prussian-Austrian war of 1866, through other mostly bleak experiences, to the day when the Czechoslovak Republic was declared: “And suddenly I saw the city miraculously transformed. […] Above the city shone the enchanting glow of freedom, the rebirth of 28 October 1918! I looked into it, I belonged to it. And from the sound of the victorious trumpets, the holy calm in the Queen’s Monastery on Úvoz, the night-time shadows and the breath of green hills and the sight of this distinct growth and size of the city, a sinfonietta grew inside me from this knowledge, from my city of Brno!” Here Janáček combined the experience of the end of the war with the establishment of Czechoslovakia in his composition. The Sinfonietta, at first called Military Sinfonietta by the composer (and presented as Rally Sinfonietta at the premiere) was originally meant to be played outdoors. Gradually, however, it grew to be a work of symphonic stature. The opening fanfare movement is played by brass instruments and timpani, and it recurs in expanded form in the fifth movement. The middle movement describes that “holy calm of the Queen’s Monastery”, while the second and fourth movements frame it with contrasting styles. For the Prague premiere Janáček provided programme names for each movement – Fanfares, Castle, Queen’s Monastery, Street and Town Hall. Later these titles were dropped and the simpler Sinfonietta was retained. The composition was dedicated to the patroness Rosa Newmarch, who in 1926 facilitated Janáček’s artistic trip to England. In December 1926 Otto Klemperer conducted the Sinfonietta in Wiesbaden, and during Janáček’s lifetime there followed performances in Brno, Berlin, London, Vienna and Dresden.

Pavel Petráněk

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Conductor: Robert Jindra

Stage director: Ondřej Havelka

Set design: Martin Černý

Costume design: Kateřina Štefková

Choreography: Jana Hanušová

Choirmaster: Martin Buchta

Choirmaster of the Kühn’s Children’s Choir: Jiří Chvála

Dramaturgy: Ondřej Hučín

CAST:

Forester: Svatopluk Sem

Vixen: Alžběta Poláčková

Fox: Michaela Kapustová

Schoolmaster, Mosquito: Jaroslav Březina

Priest, Badger: Luděk Vele

Harašta: Jiří Brückler

Forester’s wife, Owl: Jitka Svobodová

Keeper Pásek: Jan Markvart

Mrs. Pásková, Woodpecker: Yvona Škvárová

Dog Lapák: Jana Sýkorová

Rooster: Sylva Čmugrová

Hen: Michaela Šrůmová

Pepík: Daniel Matoušek / Jakub Turek

Frantík: Jakub Hliněnský / Martin Kalivoda

Little Vixen: Natalie Grossová / Tereza Šlosáková / Martina Vyhnanovská

Frog child: Matěj Kirov / Filip Koll / Matyáš Urbánek

Cricket child: Václav Preisler

Grasshopper child: Ema Doležalová / Kateřina Zikmundová

Midge child: Nikol Kouklová / Malvína Pachlová

National Theatre Choir, Kühn’s Children’s Choir

National Theatre Ballet and quests

National Theatre Orchestra

National Theatre (Prague)

The Cunning Little Vixen is the seventh of nine operas by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). The composer wrote the libretto himself, basing it on a text by Rudolf Těsnohlídek which was written to accompany illustrations by Stanislav Lolek (who, among other things, was involved in forestry and hunting), which were printed in instalments by the Brno newspaper Lidové noviny from 7 April to 23 June 1920. Janáček ignored some sections of this illustrated series, while adding more detail to others, emphasizing the world of animals and scaling back the human characters. Unlike the ending of the illustrated series, in which Bystrouška marries the male fox, Zlatohřbítek, Janáček lets the titular heroine die. He began work on the opera slowly while he was still devoting himself wholeheartedly to the composition of Káťa Kabanová, in the summer of 1921. At that time he was working out a storyline for the opera. He started the actual composition of the new work in January 1922 and, with a few breaks, this kept him occupied until the beginning of 1924, i.e. it was completed in his seventieth year. The premiere was held in Brno on 6 November 1924 under the baton of František Neumann and directed by Ota Zítek.
This new production by Prague’s National Theatre clearly bears the imprint of the director, Ondřej Havelka, with its stylization from the swing era of the 1920s, when women began to be completely emancipated, as Bystrouška demonstrates in the opera.
This work, which blends the animal world with the human world, is not seen by Havelka as a trivial children’s story. “I didn’t want to do an illustrative production with leaping furry animals, but, on the other hand, parents mustn’t be scared to bring their children along,” he states. He sees in this work a metaphor for human life. “That is why the tails are the only animal feature,” says Havelka.

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Conductor: Robert Jindra Stage director: SKUTR (Martin Kukučka and  Lukáš  Trpišovský) Set design: JAKUB KOPECKÝ Costume design: SIMONA RYBÁKOVÁ Choreography: JAN KODET Choirmaster: JURIJ GALATENKO Dramaturgy: DANIEL JÄGER CAST: Matěj Brouček, a landlord: Arnold Bezuyen / Jorge Garza Mazal, a painter, Azurean, Pete: Tomáš Kořínek / Adam Zdunikowski Sacristan, Lunigrove, Domšík from the Bell: Martin Gurbal’ / František Zahradníček Málinka, his daughter, lunar goddess, Kunka: Agnieszka Bochenek-Osiecka / Jana Sibera Würfl, a bartender, Wonderglitter, councillor: Alexandr Beň / Peter Mazalán Young waiter at bar, Child prodigy, Student: Marianna Pillárová / Martina Šnytová Housekeeper / Kedruta:  Yvona Škvárová / Erika Šporerová Composer, Harper, Miroslav, the goldsmith:  Martin Šrejma / Michal Pavel Vojta Poet, Cloudy, Vacek the Bearded: Jiří Brückler / Aleš Jenis Painter, voice / Duhoslav / Vojta: Josef Moravec / Václav Morys Pegasus / Ghost: Jindřich Panský Soldier from Tabor I.: Jaroslav Kosec / Václav Živný Soldier from Tabor II.: Pavel Ďuríček / Petr Němec Svatopluk Čech:  Ivan Kusnjer / Svatopluk Sem

National Moravian-Silesian Theatre Opera Choir and Orchestra – Concert Master Vladimír Liberda, members of ballet NDM a quests National Moravian-Silesian Theatre

Despite the fact that the opera bilogy The Excursions of Mr Brouček is Janáček’s largest-scale operatic work, it has, regrettably, not received much interest from opera houses. And this is unquestionably unfair. The composer decided to work on Čech’s satirical prose The True Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Moon in 1908, a year after the writer’s death. However, he was unlucky with his librettists, who were either unable or unwilling to adequately reshape the material into a libretto as Janáček had envisaged it. Not surprisingly, over the nine interminable years when he worked on the opera, a whole host of literary figures participated in the preparation of the libretto, abandoning the project sooner or later.  Among them were well-known names such as Zikmund Janke, F. S. Procházka, Viktor Dyk, Jiří Mahen and even Max Brod. Janáček finally finished writing the work in 1917, but after preparing the piano score he realised that the opera was too short. The political situation as well as the social climate led him to start work on another instalment of Čech’s “Broučekiad”: The Excursion of Mr Brouček, This Time to the 15th Century. This time the work proceeded quickly and the second part was ready after only nine months. Janáček then made corrections to the first part of the bilogy and linked it to the second. The Excursions of Mr Brouček was the only one of Janáček’s operas to have its premiere at the National Theatre in Prague. The musical performance was conducted by its new head, Otakar Ostrčil, with Gustav Schmoranz directing. However, it received a lukewarm reception, perhaps in part because the stage depiction of the subject left something to be desired. The opera is very unusual though, particularly in terms of its music. Here Janáček experimented both with the musical structure and with the instrumentation. The score features a glass armonica, bagpipes and an organ, as well as Janáček’s favourite viola d´amore.

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Conductor: Marko Ivanović
Stage director: David Radok
Set Design: Zuzana Ježková,  Ondřej Nekvasil
Costume Design: Zuzana Ježková
Lighting Design: Petr Kozumplík
Choirmaster: Pavel Koňárek
Dramaturgist: Pavel Petráněk
Assistant Conductor: Robert Kružík
Assistant Stage Director: Otakar Blaha, Barbora Hamalová

CAST: Emilia Marty: Gitta-Maria Sjöberg Albert Gregor: Aleš Briscein Vítek, Kolenatý’s clerk: Petr Levíček Kristina: Eva Štěrbová Jaroslav Prus: Svatopluk Sem Janek: Peter Račko Dr Kolenatý, a lawyer: František Ďuriač A Stage Technician: Jiří Klecker A Cleaning Woman: Jitka Zerhauová Hauk-Shendorf: Josef Škrobánek A Maid: Jana Wallingerová Janáček Opera Ensemble and Orchestra of the National Theatre Brno

Co-production between The National Theatre Brno and Opera Gothenburg.

Janáček completed his seventh opera, The Makropulos Affair, in 1925, when he was 71. But why did he choose Čapek’s play, which at first sight appears so thematically different from all of Janáček’s other operas? It seems to have been from a need to reflect on a life nearing its end and the meaning of life and death. This can already be seen in The Cunning Little Vixen, where death goes hand in hand with birth. Janáček’s pantheistic outlook is obvious here: nature has its own order and, though it may appear cruel, it is the only conceivable and logical one. The Makropulos Affair examines what would happen if this order were artificially tampered with. For someone who has lived to be 300 years old, life becomes unbearable. Faith and the meaning of existence are lost. To outward appearances, such a person becomes a faultless personality, but inwardly they are transformed into a kind of monster. It would appear that the premiere of Čapek’s play arrived at precisely the right time and coincided with the composer’s own thoughts. The premiere of the opera took place at the Brno National Theatre in the City Theatre building (today’s Mahen Theatre) on December 26 1929 and met with great success. This was partly due to the excellent staging by the conductor František Neumann, the director Ota Zítek and Alexandra Čvanová in the lead role (who, incidentally, took on this role at only 29 years of age). What is it that continues to fascinate us about this opera today? No doubt there is its modernity and exclusive setting, where people use cars and telephones, but it also has the mystery and tension of a well-constructed detective story. However, its success is mainly due to the brilliance of Janáček’s music and his ability as a composer to perfectly combine words and music into one unique operatic whole.

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Although Jenůfa represents the very beginning of the composer’s journey towards a modern and distinctive form of musical drama, it is his most frequently performed opera (a similar situation to that of Benjamin Britten and his early opera Peter Grimes). Work on Jenůfa placed great demands on Janáček. He found the subject matter for his opera in a play by the young writer Gabriela Preissová which was controversial in its day. The story of the tragic fate of a young woman which is brought about by the prejudices of the time was evidently in keeping with Janáček’s social conscience. In choosing Preissová’s play, however, he also chose a work of prose, which he was the very first composer to employ in an opera. Work on the composition took him a full nine years, starting in 1894. However, it was frequently interrupted because of his enormous workload at the schools where he taught. He completed the opera as his beloved daughter Olga was dying, at the beginning of 1903. The uncertainty associated with the new approach to composition, this tragic event in his personal life and the subsequent rejection of the opera by the Prague National Theatre placed a huge psychological strain on the composer. In the end the premiere was taken on by Brno and its Czech National Theatre. It took place in a now-defunct theatre building on Veveří Street on January 21, 1904 under the baton of C. M. Hrazdira. Although, in view of the limitations of its time, the staging was rather rudimentary, it enjoyed great success. Janáček then went on to rework the opera into its present form in 1906 and 1907. After the Prague (1916) and then Viennese premiere (1918) the work was taken up across the world and it remains one of the most frequently performed operas of the 20th century.

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The opera Alice in Bed came about through the collaboration of an international team of four creative individuals. It was the director Sjaron Minailo who came up with the idea of writing the full-length opera Alice in Bed, when he and Markéta Dvořáková were supposed to create a piece of musical theatre as part of composition courses in England in 2007. Markéta Dvořáková invited Ivo Medek to collaborate on an opera. They gradually abandoned their original plan – of writing a libretto based on a text by Susan Sontag – as the text seemed to both of them to be too gloomy and depressing. They retained only certain light moments (references to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass) and decided to write a completely original text in which there would be more scope for a dreamlike, fantastical type of opera rendition. Only when everything had been agreed upon in advance did the actual libretto come into being, written by Sjaron Minailo and Anne Daschkey. The creators of the music then worked with the finished text in the usual way which applies to team composition. Firstly, there were many more hours of discussion about a range of different aspects – the atmosphere and character of individual scenes, the typical attributes of individual characters, the assigning of musical instruments to characters, etc. Then cuts had to be made to the text as there was too much of it. The originally envisaged instrumentation, for voices and percussion only, was gradually enriched with more and more instruments which the authors considered necessary, until they ended up with eleven of them. The arrangement of percussion instruments even includes children’s toys (musical toys, rattles, squeaky toys, etc.) which evoke young Alice’s childish world. The world premiere of the opera took place this spring in Brno. Part of this multimedia composition is a video component which was the work of Lukáš Medek, a computer-game designer.
The story explores the life of Alice, a successful designer of computer games who lives both her creative and personal life internally split in two.

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Leoš Janáček – Youth
Josef Bohuslav Foerster: Wind Quintet

In August 1923 Janáček was present at an enthralling performance by the excellent French ensemble Société moderne des instruments à vent at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Salzburg. It is, therefore, no surprise that when the ensemble came to Brno on April 10 1924, the composer made sure he was in attendance. The concert on April 10 1924 was organised by the Brno Conservatory and included Roussel’s Divertimento, Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov’s piano quintets and Foerster’s Wind Quintet. Not long afterwards Janáček began work on his own wind sextet. It is, therefore, possible that his composition could have been inspired by Foerster’s Wind Quintet from 1909. This is an exceedingly upbeat piece. It dates to the period when Foerster moved to Vienna with his wife, the famous soprano Berta Lauterová. During their stay in Vienna the composer created several of what are perhaps his most important works, such as Symphony No. 4 “Easter Eve”. The imaginatively conceived four-movement Wind Quintet is an example of Foerster’s incredible skills in instrumentation as well as his essential lyricism. Leoš Janáček did not write his wind quintet until 1924, when he was seventy years old. It was a year when he looked back on both his professional and private life, often reflecting on his youth and childhood – hence the title Youth. We can only surmise which part is dedicated to his childhood experiences, but in one instance the composer does directly inform us. Material from the third movement comes from Janáček’s composition The March of the Blue Birds. This musical vignette is related to the composer’s childhood at the Staré Brno Monastery foundation. It was there that the 12-year-old Leoš witnessed an incursion by Prussian soldiers into Staré Brno: “During the holidays of 1866 the Staré Brno Monastery Square was filled with grey and red Prussian soldiers. The high piccolos caterwauled above the roll of the tin drums. Fierce music. To this day it still throbs in my ears.” Although the composition had originally been written for students of the Prague Conservatory, the premiere was given at the Brno Conservatory on October 21 1924 by musicians from the Brno Opera. Today Youth is one of the most frequently played chamber pieces for wind instruments.

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Chamber Opera of the Music Faculty of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, Brno

Composer: Leoš Janáček
Libreto: Leoš Janáček
Conductor: Nikol Kraft
Director: David Kříž
Set and costume design: Sylva Marková 
Videoart: Jakub Kříž
Choirmaster: Klára Roztočilová
Choirmaster – Children´s choir: Valéria Maťašová 
Students of production of the opera: Michaela Bóková, Michal Grombiřík, Mária Žilecká

On November 6 of this year we celebrated 90 years since the premiere of Janáček’s “forest idyll”, the opera The Cunning Little Vixen. “I captured Vixen Sharp-Ears for the forest and the sorrow of later years,” wrote Janáček to his muse Kamila Stösslová. And indeed it is the masterpiece of the composer’s old age, written when he was almost in his seventies. The start of the composer’s interest in this subject matter goes back to the year 1920, when his housekeeper Mařa drew his attention to the tales of the crafty vixen from the pen of Rudolf Těsnohlídek, which were being serialized in the newspaper Lidové noviny. However, another two years elapsed before he set to work on it. In the meantime he studied nature, noted down the “speech melodies” of birds and frogs, and observed a family of foxes. His transformation of Těsnohlídek’s novella into an opera libretto was very effective; he shifted the political satire and the historical context into the background and instead built the whole story around the simple tale of the vixen, the forest’s inhabitants and human figures from the area around Brno, with an emphasis on the justice of the natural order, determined by a higher power, and the beginning and end of (not only human) life. The premiere took place in the City Theatre in Brno on November 5 1924, directed by Ota Zítek, with brilliant costumes by Eduard Milén, in a concise musical rendition by František Neumann. These days the work is performed literally all over the world and finds an audience across the generations, from young people to their parents and grandparents.

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Last year the Kronos Quartet celebrated 40 years of existence. The string quartet was founded in 1973 by the American violinist David Harrington, who gathered around him a group of open-minded and classically educated musicians who were willing to peer out from the somewhat confining ghetto of modern classical music. The quartet systematically devotes itself to the interpretation of new music in particular. It is one of the most influential, highly regarded and sought-after ensembles in contemporary classical music. The basis of the Kronos Quartet’s work is long-term collaboration with many world-renowned composers. Thanks to its repertoire, the ensemble is also very popular with listeners who don’t normally go in for classical music. The Kronos Quartet feels equally at home in concert halls and on stage at a huge festival. The ensemble’s performance is sure to appeal to a wide audience.

Especially for the Janáček Brno festival, they have included in their programme a work by the eminent American minimalist Steve Reich, who took inspiration from Janáček’s music. This is a composition entitled Different Trains from 1988, which won a prestigious Grammy Award the following year in the category Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The work references Janáček’s method of speech melodies.

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BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ (1890–1959)

Primrose H 348

A New Hat   

Behind Our Farmyard

Complaint

Painted Wood

Midday

JOSEF BOHUSLAV FOERSTER (1859–1951)

Children’s Choruses op. 89

Forest Spring

Crocodile

Nut

KAREL REINER (1910–1979)

The Flowered Horse (selection from the cycle)

It begins with Adam
Potatoes and barometers
Ten commandments for young poets
The electric spell
The photographer
Goliath was a terrible master
The flowered horse

Brno Children’s Chorus

Valeria Maťašová – choirmaster

Pavel Wallinger – violin

Šárka Králová – piano

LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)

Little Queens

We are carrying the maypole
The falcon flew away
We have a lame queen
Hurry, my little queen, hurry 
Who is the queen that the king has gained
Little onion
The gallant’s young wife
We’re riding to the mill
A beautiful, beautiful little queen is standing
Our queen
Our willows are turning green 

LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)

Nursery Rhymes

Turnip was getting married

Nothing’s nicer than early spring

Mole is crawling

Karel rode to hell

Torn trousers

Franta from the knacker family plays the bass

Our dog, our dog

I’m preaching a sermon

The old woman was casting spells

Ho, ho, the cows are coming

My tiny little wife

The old woman’s crawling into the elder tree

The white goat’s picking pears

The surly German banged the pots

The goat lies on the hay

Vašek, shepherd boy, drummer-boy

Frantík, Frantík

The bear sat on the tree trunk

Kantiléna, the Youth and Children’s Choir at the Brno Philharmonic

Jakub Klecker – Choirmaster

Petr Pomkla – 1st flute, Kristina Vaculová – 2nd flute, Lukáš Daňhel – 1st clarinet, Stanislav Pavlíček – 2nd clarinet, Dušan Drápela – 1st bassoon, Jiří Jakubec – 2nd bassoon and contrabassoon, Michal Pokorný – double bass, Petr Hladík – ocarina and small drum, Jiří Hrubý –piano

Petr Levíček – tenor

Jan Šťáva – bass

Choral works have been important for a number of Czech composers. Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) wrote dozens of songs and choruses, and in most of them he took his inspiration from folk poetry – for example, the New Chap-Book from 1942 or Sušil’s magical collection Songs on One Page and Songs on Two Pages from 1943 and 1944, which despite their diminutive size impress with their harmonic and rhythmic charge. In Nice in 1954 Martinů composed another popular chorus based on Moravian folk poetry, stylized as duets for soprano, alto, violin and piano, called Primrose. The impetus for these duets came from the composer and conductor Zdeňek Zouhar, who performed this opus with his female choir in 1955. It is well known that when Martinů was invited to write these choruses by Zouhar, he spontaneously replied: “I would be delighted to write some duets for you… Working with our folk texts always brings me pleasure”. Today Primrose is one of the jewels of the Czech choral repertoire, and it is also interesting that it forms a kind of counterweight to the composer’s monophonic songs and also a new variation on Dvořák’s Moravian Duets.

The songs and especially the choruses of Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951) are some of his most popular works. He inherited his love of choral song from his ancestors and he began his musical life as a choral singer (choir of the church of St Adalbert, Prague Hlahol). In his own choral works he initially borrowed greatly from Smetana and Dvořák, but as he continued to mature in his composition he was influenced by other developments and he set off in several directions – for example, using extreme positions (falsetto), wide dynamic contrasts and hitherto unknown inner dramatic tension, which left its imprint on every larger-scale choral creation. The choruses presented today are part of a five-part collection entitled Children’s Choruses op. 89. The accompanying texts were written by Josef Václav Sládek and Karel Toman.

Because of his Jewish origin and the times in which he lived, the life of the composer Karel Reiner (1910–1979) was far from easy… He wrote more than 280 smaller and larger, mainly instrumental pieces. A large part of his work was made up of incidental music for films, theatre and radio. At the same time he worked in musical education and journalism. He also has several choruses to his name, among which the foremost is the cycle The Flowered Horse – poems, games and rhymes to the words of Norbert Frýd from 1942.

There is a significant proportion of choral compositions among the work of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). He himself was the choirmaster of several amateur choirs, but in the years 1879-88, for example, also of the Brno Beseda, where he attracted attention as an excellent and lively conductor. There he followed the footsteps of Křížkovský and led the society’s choir to great musical heights.

Choruses were the first of Janáček’s works on which he honed his compositional style. Among his most famous male choruses are Maryčka Magdónova, 70.000, and Halfar the schoolmaster from the start of the 20th century. Janáček wrote the cycle Little Queens with the subtitle Old Ritual Folk Dances with Songs in 1889 and it is made up of 10 folk songs and dances. Little Queens comes from a period when Leoš Janáček systematically and consciously drew on folk song, dance and poetry. Little Queens has its origin in the pagan era and is related to the summer solstice. These are ancient ceremonial dances with songs which were collected and compiled by František X. Bakeš in the late 19th century on the basis of work by the renowned collector František Sušil.

Janáček composed the Nursery Rhymes in 1925, originally for three mezzo-sopranos, clarinet and piano, and set only eight nursery rhymes to music. In 1926 the work was expanded into the form we know today. The cycle was created in 1926 to short verses for children which were published in the children’s supplement of the Lidové noviny newspaper and are among the greatest works from the Maestro’s last period. Janáček wanted to project some of Lada’s illustrations to go along with the Nursery Rhymes, but it was technically impossible at the time. It was not until the end of the 1940s that the director Eduard Hofman was able to animate Lada’s illustrations. However, he only worked on a selection of the Nursery Rhymes, so for the remaining parts the film was supplemented by static images

Pavel Petráněk

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Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) dedicated a number of compositions to the piano, of which the best known are On an Overgrown Path, Sonata I. X. 1905 and the cycle of four pieces for piano In the Mists, which was the last of Janáček’s larger-scale compositions for solo piano. This cycle reveals a very intimate and sensitive side to its creator. It was written in 1912 and its individual sections are short, seemingly improvized rhapsodies linked together by motifs in keys with many B-flats, full of passion and fragments typical of Janáček. The cycle In the Mists reveals the influence of the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy, whose works Janáček studied. The first three movements of the cycle are basically tripartite with a lyrical opening melody and a rather more dramatic middle section. The fourth movement consists of nervous motif passages at the end of which we hear the fateful motif of the owl. All four movements are in “misty” keys with five or six B-flats.

A Tale is Janáček’s only composition for cello and piano. The work underwent a complicated genesis, which is demonstrated by several extant versions from between the years 1910 and 1923. Janáček took his inspiration for this short piece from one of the Russian fairy tales which were composed and published in the form of prose poems by one of the representatives of Russian romanticism, Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky; his story has the long title The Tale of Tsar Berendey, of his Son, the Tsarevich Ivan, of the Malice of Kashchey the Immortal and the Great Wisdom of Tsarina Marya, Kashchey’s Daughter. There are various opinions about whether  illustrative aspects connected to Zhukovsky’s story can be detected in Janáček’s composition, or whether the composer only had in mind the atmosphere of the story  drawn from Russian epic poems.

Pavel Haas (1899–1944), the brother of the famous film actor Hugo Haas, composed only a few dozen pieces of music before he died in Auschwitz. He studied composition at the conservatory in his native Brno, with Leoš Janáček among others, and he is said to have been one of his most gifted pupils. In his work Haas used elements of Czech and Moravian folk music, often quoting Hussite songs and the St Wenceslas Chorale. He wrote his Piano Suite in 1935. In this composition the pianist for today’s concert has not only spotted a quotation from the St Wenceslas Chorale, heard in a concealed form in the Con molta espressione and openly in the Pastorale, but also from Broadway hits, which appear in the dance-style movements Danza and Postludium; however, the melodies from Richard Rodgers’ musical Babes in Arms quoted here didn’t have their Broadway premiere until two years after Haas’s Suite was written (!) At the end of the suite, quartal chords and American-style stride piano intermingle with painful chromatics to create an organ-like effect.

Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940) is perhaps the most famous female Czech composer. After studying in Brno and in Prague, this native of Brno extended her education in France, and she also studied privately with Bohuslav Martinů. From the period of her studies with Vítězslav Novák at the Prague Conservatory comes the Grotesque Passacaglia, which Kaprálová entered into a competition by the music magazine Tempo. After it won, the composer revised the composition on Novák’s recommendation and renamed it Scherzo Passacaglia. The April Preludes have a rightful place among the masterly cyles of Czech music from the first half of the 20th century. They were dedicated to Rudolf Firkušný, who performed them frequently and with great success.  Even though Vítězslava Kaprálová died when she was only 25, she left behind her around forty compositions which attracted attention even during her lifetime.

Pavel Petráněk

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Gala festival opening

premiere

Conductor: Marko Ivanović

Stage director: David Radok

Set Design: Zuzana Ježková, Ondřej Nekvasil

Costume Design: Zuzana Ježková

Lighting Design: Petr Kozumplík

Choirmaster: Pavel Koňárek

Dramaturgist: Pavel Petráněk

Assistant Conductor: Robert Kružík

Assistant Stage Director: Otakar Blaha, Barbora Hamalová

CAST:

Emilia Marty: Gitta-Maria Sjöberg

Albert Gregor: Aleš Briscein

Vítek, Kolenatý’s clerk: Petr Levíček

Kristina: Eva Štěrbová

Jaroslav Prus: Svatopluk Sem

Janek: Peter Račko

Dr Kolenatý, a lawyer: František Ďuriač

A Stage Technician: Jiří Klecker

A Cleaning Woman: Jitka Zerhauová

Hauk-Shendorf: Josef Škrobánek

A Maid: Jana Wallingerová

Janáček Opera Ensemble and Orchestra of the National Theatre Brno

Brno National Theatre

Co-production between The National Theatre Brno and Opera Gothenburg.

Janáček completed his seventh opera, The Makropulos Affair, in 1925, when he was 71. But why did he choose Čapek’s play, which at first sight appears so thematically different from all of Janáček’s other operas? It seems to have been from a need to reflect on a life nearing its end and the meaning of life and death. This can already be seen in The Cunning Little Vixen, where death goes hand in hand with birth. Janáček’s pantheistic outlook is obvious here: nature has its own order and, though it may appear cruel, it is the only conceivable and logical one. The Makropulos Affair examines what would happen if this order were artificially tampered with. For someone who has lived to be 300 years old, life becomes unbearable. Faith and the meaning of existence are lost. To outward appearances, such a person becomes a faultless personality, but inwardly they are transformed into a kind of monster. It would appear that the premiere of Čapek’s play arrived at precisely the right time and coincided with the composer’s own thoughts. The premiere of the opera took place at the Brno National Theatre in the City Theatre building (today’s Mahen Theatre) on December 26 1929 and met with great success. This was partly due to the excellent staging by the conductor František Neumann, the director Ota Zítek and Alexandra Čvanová in the lead role (who, incidentally, took on this role at only 29 years of age). What is it that continues to fascinate us about this opera today? No doubt there is its modernity and exclusive setting, where people use cars and telephones, but it also has the mystery and tension of a well-constructed detective story. However, its success is mainly due to the brilliance of Janáček’s music and his ability as a composer to perfectly combine words and music into one unique operatic whole.

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Leoš  Janáček – Youth

Josef Bohuslav Foerster: Brass Quintet

Janáček Ensemble

In August 1923 Janáček was present at an enthralling performance by the excellent French ensemble Société moderne des instruments à vent at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Salzburg. It is, therefore, no surprise that when the ensemble came to Brno on April 10 1924, the composer made sure he was in attendance. The concert on April 10 1924 was organised by the Brno Conservatory and included Roussel’s Divertimento, Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov’s piano quintets and Foerster’s Wind Quintet. Not long afterwards Janáček began work on his own wind sextet. It is, therefore, possible that his composition could have been inspired by Foerster’s Wind Quintet from 1909. This is an exceedingly upbeat piece. It dates to the period when Foerster moved to Vienna with his wife, the famous soprano Berta Lauterová. During their stay in Vienna the composer created several of what are perhaps his most important works, such as Symphony No. 4 “Easter Eve”. The imaginatively conceived four-movement Wind Quintet is an example of Foerster’s incredible skills in instrumentation as well as his essential lyricism.

Leoš Janáček did not write his wind quintet until 1924, when he was seventy years old. It was a year when he looked back on both his professional and private life, often reflecting on his youth and childhood – hence the title Youth. We can only surmise which part is dedicated to his childhood experiences, but in one instance the composer does directly inform us. Material from the third movement comes from Janáček’s composition The March of the Blue Birds. This musical vignette is related to the composer’s childhood at the Staré Brno Monastery foundation. It was there that the 12-year-old Leoš witnessed an incursion by Prussian soldiers into Staré Brno: “During the holidays of 1866 the Staré Brno Monastery Square was filled with grey and red Prussian soldiers. The high piccolos caterwauled above the roll of the tin drums. Fierce music. To this day it still throbs in my ears.” Although the composition had originally been written for students of the Prague Conservatory, the premiere was given at the Brno Conservatory on October 21 1924 by musicians from the Brno Opera. Today Youth is one of the most frequently played chamber pieces for wind instruments.

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THE FOLK ROOTS OF LEOŠ JANÁČEK’S WORKS

Preview – OPERA EUROPA CONFERENCE

BROLN

The Brno Radio Orchestra of Folk Instruments (BROLN) was formed in 1952 with the aim of interpreting folk songs and folk instrumental music at a professional level, but in its classical form. Its set-up was based on traditional folk groups. The basis consisted of strings, cymbaloms and clarinets, to which were added as required characteristic folk instruments such as bagpipes, pipes and the Jew’s harp.

Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntál in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – and nowadays the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Her mother Ludmila was a pre-school teacher who spent most of her life with her family; her father Koloman Bitto – Bittová is the surname’s female form – was a musician strongly influenced by the land of his birth – southern Slovakia. His main instruments were string bass, cimbalom, guitar, and trumpet. This exceptional ability to play almost any instrument he laid his hands on, whether performing in classical or folk music styles, proved a major influence on his three daughters as they grew up. Both of Iva’s sisters – her older sister Ida and her younger sister Regina – are professional drama and music performers.

Iva attended drama pre-school, specializing in violin and ballet. In due course she gained admittance to the Music Conservatory in Brno, often called the Czech Republic’s second city. She graduated in drama and music. During her studies, Iva took part-time engagements as an actress and musician in Brno’s Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose On A String Theater). She cites these engagements as some of the most formative and influential of her life.

Around this time she also featured as an actress in radio, TV and movie productions. Later on, while working full time in theater, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her father’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an instrumentalist and by composing her own music.

In 1982, Iva started studying with Professor Rudolf Šťastný, the primarius (first violin) of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years the violin has become her life’s passion and the most inspiring musical instrument in her professional life. Iva firmly believes that, as playing the violin places extreme demands on musicians, the composer’s work depends utterly on commitment and diligence.

After living in the countryside near Brno for 17 years, Iva decided to relocate her personal and professional life to the United States. In the Summer of 2007, she settled amid the splendors of nature in upstate New York. Iva shares her Hudson Valley home with her younger son Antonín (born 1991) – also a dedicated musician and another chip off the Bitto block.