Janacek: On an Overgrown Path, in the Mists, Sonata 1.X1905

Janacek composed his piano music around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, before he found fame late in life with operas such as ‘Jenufa,’ ‘Kata Kabanova’ and ‘The Makropulos Case.’ Epigrammatic but obsessive, these intimate pieces speak of the composer’s passions and frustrations. But like his later works they are loaded with drama and big ideas. The first book in ‘On An Overgrown Path’ is notable for its poetic titles- such as ‘Our evenings,’ ‘They chattered like swallows,’ ‘Unutterable anguish’- which find expression in music of apparent folk-like innocence and sudden passions, which reach a powerful climax in the violent contrasts of the first book’s final piece, ‘The Barn-Owl has not flown away.’ This is music of heartbreak and desolation hardly less moving on its way than the great scenes of love and abandonment which Janacek composed for his operatic heroines. Stripped of such titles, the second book in ‘On An Overgrown Path’ is more elusive in meaning, swinging between a