Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janáček forged a modern musical language from Moravian folk song and the contours of spoken Czech. His piano music ranges from darkly brooding to cheerful dancing, with terse motifs and speech-like phrasing that mark his mature style.
He treated folk material analytically rather than as romantic colour: irregular metres, modal turns and short repeated figures that gather momentum. The same habits shape the vocal writing of his operas, built from the pitch and rhythm of ordinary speech so that character and drama sit inside the line. Beside the piano cycles On an Overgrown Path, In the Mists and the Sonata 1. X. 1905, the late operas, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass and the two string quartets carry that compressed, speech-driven intensity.
Leoš Janáček is featured on the following titles
Janáček: Piano Music
Lisa Moore breathes fresh life into these Czech piano masterpieces. Less familiar on the concert platform than his operas, Janáček's keyboard writing ranges from darkly brooding to cheerful dancing, with all the drama of one of the twentieth century's most-loved opera composers.