Leo‰ Janáãek (1854-1928)

The Danube • Schluck und Jau • Moravian Dances • Suite, Op. 3

It was not until he was 62 that Janáãek won any considerable reputation outside his native Moravia. In 1916, however, the performance of his opera JenÛfa at the Prague National Opera met with immediate success, encouraging him to spend his last twelve years in a renewed attention to opera, a form he had first tackled thirty years earlier, although that first opera, ·árka, was not performed until 1925.

Leo‰ Janáãek was born at Hukvaldy in Moravia in 1854, fifth of the nine children of a village music teacher. His education from the age of eleven was at the choir school of the Augustinian monastery in Brno, followed by training as a teacher. During his probationary years he ran the Brno monastery choir and a working men’s choral society, and after a year’s study at the Prague Orga