Concert by teachers and students from MF JAMU

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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