JANCEK

Czech composer Leos Janácek (1854–1928), unlike such prodigies as Mozart and Schubert, came into his own, creatively, very late in what was until then a quite unremarkable life, lived way off the musical map in provincial Moravia. He married a young piano pupil while he was still struggling to make ends meet, and although it seemed she never really understood the nature of his genius, he remained tied to her for life—a source of considerable conflict when he fell in love with Kamila Stosslova, a woman nearly 40 years younger, in his early 60s. It was this improbable affair (which seems to have been entirely platonic) that inspired most of the work by which Janácek continues to be best known: all the operas after Jenufa—his first great success—the Sinfonietta, the Glagolithic Mass and the passionately emotional string quartets. Zemanová, a Czech-born musicologist based in London, has done an admirable job of elucidating this odd relationship, relying on newly available translations of some of the correspondence between the pair, and her account of the works, particularly some of the earlier and lesser-known ones, is solidly satisfying. Above all, she has delivered an empathetic and even-handed account of a decidedly prickly but remarkable personality, one who achieved world recognition by dint of dogged determination, and a fixed belief in his own unique approach to music as a sort of heightened speech. Illus. not seen by PW. (Sept. 16).