Leos Janácek (1854-1928)
Choral Works
Thomas Walker, tenor
Philip Mayers, piano
Cappella Amsterdam
o.l.v. Daniel Reuss
Radio Blazers Ensemble (Ríkadla)
Opgenomen in november 2010 in de Waalse Kerk in Amsterdam.
Uitgebracht door harmonia mundi (www.harmoniamundi.com).
Janácek's choral works draw on an extremely rich repertoire of folksongs and folk tales. The composer seized on idioms from Bohemian and Moravian traditions, with their characteristic folk dances and rustic nursery rhymes, and to the recently published Moravian Duets of his compatriot Antonín Dvorák, to convey a mixture of emotions, forever shifting between cheerfulness and melancholy, like his subdued harmonies. Here we witness the birth of a musical language which, though deliberately rooted in central Europe, has projected for nearly a century the aura of a universal sentiment.