Janáček's music is at once naive and complex. The movements are often rhapsodic, as if it were language rather than music. The title of the piano cycle On an Overgrown Path is significant in this respect, as if one overgrowth were overgrowing the other. The individual titles suggest melancholy memories. Those titles came only in the final draft, after a musicologist requested Janáček to provide
… a number of piano pieces. Janáček elaborated on ten pieces, some of which he reverted to older material for harmonium. The cycle of 10 pieces appeared in 1911. Posthumously, a few more pieces were added, which incidentally did not have poetic titles. At the request of Camerata Zürich, violinist Daniel Rumler arranged all fifteen pieces for string orchestra. The French author Maïa Brami wrote texts to accompany the cycle in order to create a bridge between the parts with and without text. She recites the French texts on the CD. The booklet contains English translations. (HJ)more
