Classical Music | Piano Music

Leoš Janáček

On an Overgrown Path I, The Virgin of Frydek  Play

Ieva Jokubaviciute Piano

Recorded on 10/24/2006, uploaded on 01/08/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The Virgin of Frydek, from On an Overgrown Path, Series 1             Leos Janáček

Primarily known for his operas, the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) has also left a body of very powerful and intimate solo piano works and chamber music.  Of his set of miniatures On an Overgrown Path, Janáček wrote: 'there is distress beyond words', and 'they are so dear to me; I don't think they will ever end.'  The cycle of fifteen small pieces, composed in two sets (1-10 & 11-15), forms a stream of reminiscences of his youth, the village of Hukaldy, Moravia, where he was born, and of his beloved daughter Olga, who died in 1903 at the age of twenty-one.  Originally written for harmonium, Janáček began work on the first set at the time he was composing his opera Jenufa around 1901.  It was not until 1908 that he finished both sets. 

Janáček's interest in the folk music of his native Moravia went beyond mere fascination.  He developed a theory of speech-melody based on the natural rhythms and intonations of the Czech language and extensively used these melodies in all of his music.  He used models of Moravian folk poetry throughout On an Overgrown Path.  Above all, however, it is the incredible range of emotions and jewel-like moments that Janáček evokes through this music that is the most striking.  Memory and the emotional context of remembering are truly fundamental to On an Overgrown Path.      Ieva Jokubaviciute