living with janacek

Yesterday my quartet (the Arnica Quartet) played an early Mozart quartet (the G major, K. 157) and the great second string quartet of Leos Janacek, subtitled Intimate Letters. The concert was on a series presented by the OHSU Foundation, and took place in the acoustically and visually lovely OHSU Auditorium up on Marquam Hill.

The concert went very well, and was also well received (which is not always a guaranteed combination). It was also a fun concert to play.

While it might come as a surprise to many non-musicians, performing often not fun for a majority of the time for many of us.

It’s hard not to be self-critical during the act of performing, even though it’s not a good idea.

When you’re reacting to something that’s just happened, you’re just as likely to screw up what’s about to happen.

Great performers have perfected the Zen-like act of being in the moment – they’re doing what they need to do to execute, and have the long line in mind, but mostly they’re just in the zone, at that infinitely small point of time we call the present, for the duration of the performance.

So it seemed like we were all pretty much in the zone for this performance, and that made it fun. There were no recriminations afterwards, no “would-a, could-a, should-a”, just a nice afterglow of a job well-done.

It is especially gratifying when you’re performing a piece which is so complex and demanding as the Janacek. Extremes of tempo, dynamic, and range are the norm in Janacek’s music. His phrasings largely mirror the speech patterns of the Czech language, and his portrayal of a decade-long love affair between two people who were separated by nearly 40 years of age verges on cinéma vérité in its freshness and detail.

What is so interesting and compelling about what Janacek sets down for posterity in this quartet, namely his love for the young Kamila, is his earnestness and sincerity. Remember, he was nearly 80 years old when he wrote this piece in 1928 – he did not have the stumbling block of ego and brashness that a young suitor would. He had reached an age where he could lay his cards on the table without fear of embarrassment. A frank statement of his feelings would suffice.

And so he gave Kamila (and us) a remarkable document of the love of a man which was vital beyond his years for a woman he had no hope of marrying or attaining. Kamila was a woman who served as Janacek’s muse for the last two decades of his life, and sparked a period of remarkable fecundity, including such great masterpieces as his operas The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropulos Affair, the First string quartet The Kreutzer Sonata, the wind sextet Mládí (Youth), and of course, the Second string quartet.

What a great gift it has been to live inside the mind of this great composer who so fearlessly poured out his heart through and in his music.