Gramophone Magazine
September 2019
Editor's Choice

Jan Bartoš (piano)

Janáček: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 in E flat minor, JW VIII / 19 'From the Street'
Janáček: Along an Overgrown Path, JW VIII / 17, Book 1
Janáček: Along an Overgrown Path, JW VIII / 17, Book 2
Janáček: In the Mists
Janáček: Tema con variazioni (Zdenka's Variations)
Janáček: Reminiscence, JW 8 / 32

Before he was completely overwhelmed by love for composing, Leoš Janáček pursued a career as a virtuoso pianist. He was closely familiar with the instrument, which served for him to share his innermost emotions and feelings. Janáček wrote his first opus, Thema con variazioni, at the age of 26, when he was studying at the Leipzig Conservatory. The miniature piece A Recollection is one of his last scores. The composer conceived his three essential piano works, 1.X. 1905, On an Overgrown Path and In the Mist, between 1900 and 1912, which was a difficult phase in his life. They are perhaps the most personal, most intimate pieces he wrote. Janáček was inspired by the sound of the cimbalom, an instrument he often heard when collecting folk songs in Moravia.

The genes of the pianist Jan Bartoš evidently bear the traces of the ample musical tradition of his ancestors, including his grandfather, a cimbalom player. The legacy of folk music and the Silesian origin is what Janáček and Bartoš have in common.

"Like his erstwhile teacher Ivan Moravec, Bartoš accepts and internalises Janáček's intimate, conversational sound world for what it is, while imbuing the composer's often stark textures with a fullness of tonal body and shimmering translucence...An excellently engineered and highly satisfying release that no Janáček lover should miss." - Gramophone Magazine, September 2019.