Janáček: Piano Works

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Pianist Lars Vogt’s new solo album release is dedicated to the piano works of Leoš Janácek (1854-1928), one of the most original voices among the 20th century composers. This album includes three of the composer’s most well-known and most extensive solo piano works. These works by Janácek are marked by deep melancholy and passion. They manifest the composer's rich inner world through a musical language that remains to be timeless.

On an Overgrown Path is a piano cycle which took many shapes during a period of a decade when the composer was slowly sketching the work. The first book containing ten pieces was published in 1911. Already the same year Janáček started drafting a second book which was never completed during the composer’s lifetime: a collection of 5 pieces for the second book was published in the 1940s. These short and fragmentary pieces with evocative titles are filled with deep and mysterious atmosphere.
Janáček’s popular In the Mists is a short cycle of piano pieces written in 1912, immediately after the completion of the first book of On an Overgrown Path. These melancholic pieces are hinting towards the harmonies of Debussy without ever losing their essentially Janáčekian characteristics. Piano Sonata, "1. X. 1905 - From the Street" is what remains of an originally three-movement piano sonata premiered in 1906. The work was inspired by the killing of a young worker during a demonstration in Brno on 1 October 1905. The composer was not satisfied with the score and destroyed it later regretting this impulsive act. Fortunately, first two movements of this deeply intensive work were re-discovered and published in 1924. © Ondine