JANÁČEK Leoš, In the Mists 

Janáček inspiration for In the mists probably came from a recital at the Brno Organ School on 28 January 1912 when Marie Dvořáková played Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. In the mists certainly shows the influence of Debussy’s Impressionism, though it is also a nostalgic reflection on childhood: Bohumír Štědroň wrote that ‘Here Janáček sees his youth in a mist and remembers the days spent at Hukvaldy’. Janáček made some revisions to the cycle before publication by the Club of the Friends of Art in Brno (to which Janáček belonged) near the end of 1913. According to the title page of this edition, In the mists was given to members of the club as a gift for the year 1913. The first performance took place on 7 December 1913 at Kroměříž, played by Marie Dvořáková. She played it again, on 24 January 1914, at a Brno Organ School concert in the Lužánky Hall when Janáček himself was present. The first known performance in Prague was not until 16 December 1922, given by the pianist Václav Štěpán and the following year Janáček asked Štěpán to help him prepare an edition incorporating his final versions. An inspired combination of Impressionism and musical ideas derived from Moravian folk music, In the mists is in four movements: the first haunting (and occasionally trouble), the second quite free, the third based on a memorable melody heard at the start, and the fourth hints at the flourishes of gypsy music as well as moments of high drama. All four movements are permeated by tenderness and nostalgia, without any hint of sentimentality. 

Nigel Simeone