Janáček: The excursions of Mr Brouček

 Opera 34

Janáček: The excursions of Mr Brouček

Soloists

Czech Philharmonic orchestra and chorus

František Jilek

I was lucky enough to have the great Janáćek scholar John Tyrrell as my Ph D supervisor so I learned a lot about the composer from talking to John and reading his books as they came out. I knew the ‘big five’ operas from the Mackerras recordings (for which John wrote the booklet notes) but I had not heard this opera before.

What a strange yet wonderful piece it is. Simon Rattle called it ‘really beautiful and off the charts surreal’ and that sums it up very well. The first part, the excursion to the moon, is dominated by a manic waltz rhythm which crops up time and time again in various guises. The orchestration is wonderfully distinctive and hair-raising lay difficult - one wonders quite how the orchestra coped with it in 1920. The second part is perhaps slightly less inspired thought it does have some extraordinary choral writing, which not surprisingly gave the original performers real problems and required some discrete instrumental doubling. Yet it many ways the highlight is the absolutely gorgeous love duet that forms an interlude between the two parts of the opera. This shows that Janáċek had a melodic gift equal to anybody of his generation.

I can’t believe that it has taken me so long to listen to this peice. I will certainly return to it.

This concludes this series of Czech operas, If you include the Foerster  https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Foerster I included in last year’s project I have covered most of the major 19th figures. I’ll return to the Czech lands later in this project to pick up some more 20th century works.