Janáček: On an Overgrown Path, JW VIII/17

Featuring

Gustav Piekut
Leoš Janáček

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Composition History

Several pieces from the first series of On an Overgrown Path, including Nos. 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10, initially appeared for harmonium in a collection called Slavonic Melodies.

Composer Biography

Leoš Janáček, a Moravian composer, was discovered late in his career, not until his sixties with the 1916 Prague production of his opera Jenůfa.

Composition History

The cycle On an Overgrown Path is autobiographical, reflecting Janáček's rustic boyhood in Hukvaldy and the long, suffering death of his daughter Olga.

Performer Biography

Gustav Piekut, the pianist on this recording, has received several awards in Denmark, including the Artist Prize of the Danish Music Critics' Association and the Danish Radio P2 Talent Prize.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Janáček developed 'speech-melody', a compositional technique based on the rhythms and inflections of his native tongue, which he considered his 'windows into the soul of man'.

Album & Artwork

The cover art for this album is "Wald im Spätherbst" (Forest in Late Autumn), a painting from 1835 by Caspar David Friedrich, a German Romantic landscape painter.