Leos Janacek : Choral Works

1. Six Moravian Choruses - I. The Slighted Heart
2. Six Moravian Choruses - II. The Pledge of Love
3. Six Moravian Choruses - III. Forsaken
4. Six Moravian Choruses - IV. Parting without Sorrow
5. Six Moravian Choruses - V. The Wild Rose
6. Six Moravian Choruses - VI. Trust
7. The Wild Duck
8. The Wolf's Trail
9. Elegy on the Death of My Daughter Olga - Elegie na smrt dcery Olgy, JW 4/30
10. Rikadla - I. Introduction
11. Rikadla - II. The beetroot got married
12. Rikadla - III. There's nothing better than springtime
13. Rikadla - IV. The mole creeps
14. Rikadla - V. Karel rode off to hell
15. Rikadla - VI. Ragged trousers
16. Rikadla - VII. Franta the knacker's son
17. Rikadla - VIII. Our dog, our dog
18. Rikadla - IX. I preach, I preach a sermon
19. Rikadla - X. The old woman was casting spells
20. Rikadla - XI. Ho, ho, off go the cows
21. Rikadla - XII. My tiny little wife
22. Rikadla - XIII. Granny's crawled into the elder bush
23. Rikadla - XIV. The white goat's picking up the pears
24. Rikadla - XV. Grumpy German broke the pots
25. Rikadla - XVI. Nanny goat's lying in the hay
26. Rikadla - XVII. Vašek, the rascal, the drummer boy
27. Rikadla - XVIII. Frantík, Frantík
28. Rikadla - XIX. The bear sat on a log
29. Our Evenings - On an Overgrown Path, First Series: I. Our evenings
30. Ave Maria - Varyto, JW 8/3
31. Our Father - Otče náš

Janáček’s choral works draw on an extremely rich repertory of folksongs and folk tales. The composer seized on idioms from Bohemian and Moravian traditions, with their characteristic folk dances and rustic nursery rhymes, and on the recently published Moravian Duets of his compatriot Antonín Dvořák, to convey a mixture of emotions, forever shifting between cheerfulness and melancholy, like his subdued harmonies. Here we witness the birth of a musical language which, though deliberately rooted in central Europe, has projected for nearly a century the aura of a universal sentiment.