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Leos
Janáček Czech composer
Hukvaldy, 03.06.1854 - Prague,
12.08.1928
Janáček grew up in a family
which counted many amateur musicians and at the age of ten he entered the Augustine monastery in Brno
where he benefited from the teaching of the
choirmaster Krizkowsky who was also a talented composer of church music.
When he was transferred as choirmaster to Olomouc Janácek succeeded him on the
post, but this only lasted a short time due to his feeling of insufficient
technical foundation.
So he entered the organ school in Prague which he left rather suddenly
after some disagreement with his teacher. So Janácek returned to Brno for
a short time being appointed conductor of the Brno Philharmonic Society
but he was still not satisfied with his education. Instead he now turned
to Leipzig for a year and in 1879 he went to Vienna before retuning to Brno
to fulfill his ambition of opening an organ school. It should be noted
that the term organ school was in fact what we today would call a college
of music.
All the time
Janáček had been composing - often getting his works
published at his own expense, but in 1886 he found a publisher for his four
male-voice choruses which he dedicated to his friend and much admired colleague
Dvorak, who admired the power of the works but was somewhat disturbed
by Janácek's harmonies.
It is true that
Janáček's music doesn't sound like anyone's else and this
is partly due to the region in which he was born. Hukvaldy lies close to
the Polish border where the local dialect is some mixture of Polish an
Czech. But more important is the folk music here which differs from the
folk music of the rest of Moravia and Bohemia in being modal instead of
diatonic and this had a major influence on Janácek's musical language.
In 1887 Janácek composed his first opera Sarka without making any great
impression and after that Pocatek Románu (The Beginning of a Romance)
followed. The turning-point
came in 1916 when his opera Jeji Pastorkyna (Jenufa) from 1904 was produced at the
National Theatre in Prague. From one day to the other Janácek's name became
known - he was no longer an obscure provincial composer but one of his
country's famous men.
As this story shows how arbitrary the dice of Fate are cast it deserves to
be retold here. A man of literature was on holyday near Brno and during a walk he one day
heard from an open window a woman singing some music, he
had never heard before. The director of the National Theatre was on
holiday in the same neighborhood and together they contacted the woman who
played and sang the whole thing to them again. The director immediately
asked for the score to be sent to the National Theatre in Prague, but
after a first dismissal by the conductor Kovarovich the director insisted
and Janácek's opera was performed with tremendous success.
Janáček's piano
Capriccio for
piano, flute/piccolo, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba
1926
The work was written for WW I invalid Otakar Holman who also premiered
the work in 1928. At first
Janáček gave it the title Defiance -
referring
to Holman's decision to continue his career with only one arm, but it
was replaced the more neutral and appropriate "Capriccio". There are four movements: 1.
Allegro, 2. Adagio, 3. Allegretto, 4. Andante and it was the last work of
his
Janáček heard being played.
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Hans Jelmoli
Swiss composer, pianist
and conductor
(Zürich, 17.01.1877 - Zürich,
06.05.1936)
Hans Jelmoli was born in Zurich into the family of rich and renowned family
of the Jelmolis, founders of Switzerland's most famous department store, a
firm which is still in business today but began his musical career at the
early age of eleven with a number of song with piano accompaniment. After his studies at the Conservatory of Frankfurt am Main,
where Engelbert Humperdinck and Iwan Knorr were
his most famous teachers (composition) and the piano under Ernst Engesser.
From 1898 until 1899 he was third conductor at the Stadttheater in Mainz and
from 1899 until 1900 second Kapellmeister and chorus-master at the
Stadttheater in Würzburg. After these experiences in Germany he
returned to his native
city in the twenties, where he worked as music critic,
teacher of composition and pianist, and in his free time he wrote musical dramas,
piano pieces and
songs. His excellent reputation as a concert soloist, chamber musician and
vocal accompanist led to many concerts both in Switzerland and
internationally.
Jelmoli wrote a
considerable number of works for the stage. Scores of incidental music to
Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, to
Diderot's Est-il bon? Est-il méchant? and to Georg Büchner's Leonce und
Lena and for patriotic plays such as Marignano and for the fairy-tale play
Prinz Goldhaar und die Gänsehirtin. His vocal works for the stage include
Aphrodite, a Hellenic festival play, the musical comedies Sein Vernmächtnis
and Aufschwankem Pfad, and several patriotic musical plays based on legends
or historical events from his native town. Jelmoli's instrumental works
include suites and separate pieces from his stage works, extracted either
for orchestra or for chamber ensembles. Among his chamber works are piano
pieces, one sonata each for piano, violin and cello, a piano trio and a
string quintet. Jelmoli also composed numerous songs and vocal cycles with
piano or organ.
Jelmoli often used Swiss folk material in his
compositions; in the selected songs there are many pearls of the dialect lyrics by Isabelle
Kaiser, Hermann Löns and C. F. Meyer, such as the
melancholic verse-song Häiweh (Ernst Eschmann) and the Liedli based on a very rare dialect poem
of Karl Stamm (1890 - 1919) who in Der Aufbruch des Herzens (1919)
developed his own expressionistic language, which is highly opposite to his
own late
romantic sound world.
In his own time Jelmoli's choral pieces
were his most frequently performed compositions. Among his
arrangements we find a transcription for small orchestra of Mozart's Adagio
for pianoforte, KV 540, and the left-hand adaptation of the minuet from
Schubert's Piano Sonata, D 894 mentioned below.
Among his
orchestral works are Three Pieces for Orchestra
from the Lyrical Comedy His
Legacy and Reigen (Round Dance, in G major) with the subtitle Ballet
music (reminiscent of
Tchaikovsky) but with obvious local folk inspiration, with pastoral
calls for solo winds framing a leisurely minuet in the style of a Ländler
orchestrated for double woodwind, two horns and two trumpets, timpani,
triangle, harp and strings.
(Schubert: Menuett, D major
für eine Hand allein - from the piano sonata D 894 ) (Zürich:
Holzmann)
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur
1919, p.87
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Ale Jermář
Czech composer and organist
Prague, 13.06.1929 - New London,
Conn., USA, 13.02.2004
He first studied the organ with
his father, Vitezslav who was a composer and organist, later he studied at
the Prague conservatory with J. B. Krajs finishing in 1955. Jermar
has giving concerts since 1945, and with Otakar Hollmann he gave the first performance
of the Ciacona for organ and piano by Jarmil Burghauser on May
17.1954 in Prague.
Since 1968 he was living in the USA, where he was active as a church
organist and composer.
???
Written for Otakar Hollmann
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Thomas Arnold
Johnson English pianist, composer
and writer on music
Neston, Wirral, Cheshire, 1908
- Neston, 1989
Eight Little
Left Hand Pieces in two
sets. c.1947 (Lengnick)
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Raphael
Joseffy Hungarian
piano virtuoso
Hunfalu, Hungary, 03.07.1853 -
New York, 25.06.1915
Joseffy came from Hungary and
studied first with Moscheles, Reinecke and Tausig - and finally with Liszt
for a year from 1870, becoming one of his favorite students. He was a true
miniaturist - with delicacy and poetry, and due to his singing tone
and pianissimo shadings he was called The (Adeline) Patti of the
Piano. After many years of touring he finally settled in USA - teaching
privately and at The National Conservatory of Music in New York
City.
If you read (and believe) the verdict of the critic James Huneker -
Joseffy must have been quite exceptional: Joseffy stands today
(1911) for all that is exquisite and poetic in the domain of the piano. A
virtuoso among virtuosi, and the beauty of his tone, its velvety,
aristocratic quality gives him a unique position in the music-loving
world. There is magic and moonlight in his playing of a Chopin Nocturne,
and meteor-like brilliance in his performance of a Liszt
concerto. Well - Huneker was a man of a rare and special critical
poetry
- but he knew what he was talking about - and knew it better than any
of his colleagues.
Joseffy also was highly esteemed among his virtuoso
colleagues, and apart from envy, jealousy and other mundane things, they
are often the best judges.
Many years ago a Russian painter, Ilya Glazunov, visited Denmark and he
told me the most wonderful story of musical colleagues: Once he was visiting the great violinist
David Oistrakh and they were talking about violinists - in general. Then
Oistrakh said: There are many violinists - and then there is - Heifetz! What better compliment can you get
from a colleague - and
what a shame that Joseffy never made just one record.
Gavotte (1880) (Schuberth)
This is an arrangement from
Bach's Partita nr. 3 for solo violin in E major
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