Janacek’s 1.X.1905 Piano Sonata

Janacek was a Czech, better known perhaps for his operatic works, which established his fame later in his life. The 1905 Sonata is a stirring work, by turns stridently militant and suavely lyrical. It’s impossible not to hear in it an undercurrent of longing, resignation and remorse. It’s been interpreted as a reaction to the death of a young Czech during a university demonstration in 1905, so presumably it has a clear political context. Janáček’s major piano works were written during a time of political and emotional strife. It was a decade filled with political suppression, multiple deaths, and a search for artistic validation. Sonata 1. X. 1905 is a musical representation of Janacek’s staunch political views, connoting his frustrations as a provincial composer.[…] The Dutch composer Theo Verbey made an orchestral version of 1.X.1905, which received its premiere on 9 May 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest.[…] The two movements of the sonata are Foreboding (con moto), and Death (adagio). 2 The first movement is filled with halting, staccato gestures which have a kind of adolescent, indignant passion about them, with an intermittent sostenuto figure going in the left hand, the theme emerging over and over in the right. The second movement is exquisitely lyrical, continuing the passionate figure of the first, but with meditative pauses and rhetorical questionings.