Czech composer Leoš Janáček is best remembered today for his operas Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen. As it turns out, his marriage was just as dramatic as any of his operas. In 1876, he began teaching piano to his

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) had a full opera career in the Czech lands, but his music languished in Western Europe until certain conductors took him and promoted his music. One of those conductors was Charles Mackerras (1925–2010), whose championing of Janáček’s

Discovering Leoš Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path feels like finding a hidden diary in a forgotten attic. Each piece in this collection of fifteen miniatures evokes a vivid memory whispered through the keys of the instrument. Leoš Janáček: Po zarostlém

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) first encountered the Danube in March 1923. On a visit to Bratislava, Slovakia, he saw the river and decided to write a Slavic symphonic poem about it. He regarded the river as Slavic since it passed through

The craze for nationalism that swept 1920s Europe was a time for composers to nail their national colours in music. Leoš Janáček’s 1926 Sinfonietta was an ode to Czechoslovakia. The country was created in 1918 after the collapse of the

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), unlike his contemporaries, really only started to be a composer in mid-life, so his work emerged, fully formed and of ‘startling originality’, later in his life than for most. His reputation up to around 1916 was really

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, Leoš Janáček received his first honorary doctorate from the Masaryk University in Brno. The composer was predictably proud and signed his correspondence and all his compositions as “Dr. Ph. Leoš Janáček” thereafter. It

Hukvaldy was described as the largest fortified castle in Moravia belonging to the bishops of Olomouc. In time, a small village began to grow up beneath the castle in the second half of the eighteenth century. The village sported a