大象传媒

Donald Macleod explores Janacek's turbulent, lovestruck, masterpiece-filled final years, as he drew inspiration from his unrequited love for Kamila St枚sslov谩.

The life of Leos Janacek (1854-1928) is one of the strangest in all classical music. Virtually ignored for most of his career, in his late 60s Janacek abruptly began to compose some of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, whilst all the time hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with a woman more than half his age, Kamila St枚sslov谩. Yet once upon a time Janacek was best known as a composer of chamber music. This week, Donald Macleod explores the composer's life through his instrumental and small-scale compositions, revealing the little-known story of his struggle for recognition.

Janacek's breakthrough success in the late 1910s coincided with his falling head-over-heels in love with a young married woman, Kamila St枚sslova. For the last decade of his life, the composer existed in a strange, woozy idyll of unrequited love and astonishing musical fertility as he composed masterpiece upon masterpiece - among them the Sinfonietta and Glagolitic Mass and the operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Case - all written around his 70th birthday. Donald Macleod explores Janacek's chaotic personal life and musical genius in his final years, with a complete performance of the composer's Second String Quartet (Intimate Letters), inspired by more than 700 letters Janacek wrote to his beloved Kamila.

March of the Blue Boys
Pavel Sumpk, tabor
Eva Podarikova, celesta
Frantisek Kantor, piccolo
Martin Oprsal, glockenspiel

Concertino
Paul Crossley, piano
London Sinfonietta
David Atherton, conductor

Waiting For You!
Rudolf Firkusny, piano

String Quartet No 2 (Intimate Letters) (version with viola d'amore)
Gunter Teuffel, viola d'amore
Members of the Mandelring Quartet

Vasek, the Rascal Drummer-Boy; Liitle Frantik; The Bear Sat On a Tree Trunk (Rikadla)
Collegium Vocale Gent
Het Collectif
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor.