Corinne Winters & David Mareček

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) composed his Love Songs to texts by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský in late 1888 by reworking and revising eight songs from his youthful cycle Cypresses of 1865. Dvořák’s captivating settings place this cycle among the gems of Czech song literature.

The music of Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940) reflects an intimate feminine world imbued with delicate, tender lyricism. In her song cycles she transformed influences from Janáček, Martinů, and the interwar avant-garde into a distinctive voice of her own. This survey of her songs spans from the early Two Songs to words by R. Bojek (1932), through Waving Farewell to a poem by Vítězslav Nezval (1937), to the late cycle Sung into the Distance, written in Paris in 1939.

Leoš Janáček’s Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs, a collection of fifty-three arrangements of folk songs for voice and piano, was created between 1892 and 1901 in parallel with his work on the opera Jenůfa. Janáček’s piano accompaniments masterfully stylise folk elements and enhance the atmosphere of these mostly love-themed songs.

Janáček’s Fairy Tale for cello and piano was inspired in 1910 by Vasily Zhukovsky’s Russian epic poem The Tale of Tsar Berendey, which touches on themes of family happiness, unfulfilled longing for children, and the sorrow of their loss—subjects that also resonated deeply in the composer’s personal life. The Fairy Tale is filled with virtuosic and emotionally charged music, moving between tenderness, drama, and joy.

The concert concludes with songs by the Brno-born composer and celebrated opera and film music author Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957). His Three Songs, Op. 22 (1928–1929) set love poetry by the music critic Karl Kobald and the Austrian Countess Eleonore von Sternberg. The Three Songs, Op. 18 (1924), on the other hand, are settings of mystical poems by Austrian playwright Hans Kaltneker. Korngold’s late-Romantic style underscores the dreamy, enigmatic atmosphere of these verses.