Janácek, Suite for Strings
Selected Composition
Leós Janácek, Suite for Strings
Program Notes
Not one, but two adagios grace this beautiful composition in six parts. Again, to my knowledge I had never heard this suite before tonight. I found myself holding my breath in the adagios. The entire piece is past words lovely.
Here is Therese Divry conducting the Ad Artem Orchestra of Lorraine in Janácek's 1887 Idyll for Strings:
Leós Janácek, Suite for Strings
I photographed "From the Brim of Dawn," the flowers above, on Temple Square in Salt Lake City (2006). The title is from the British World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, and his poem "Thrushes":
Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering;
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;
Who hears the cry of God in everything,
And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.
