Piano Sonata 1. X. 1905

1. 0:00
   Opening phrases, Adagio

   Each short phrase begins after a rest. The right hand leaps from B♭ to E♭ and falls back, the left hand moves beneath it, and both hands then hold a chord. Janáček marks the movement Adagio, with the quaver at 56.

2. 0:55
   Death of František Pavlík, Brno, 1905

   In October 1905 rival demonstrations over a proposed Czech university filled the streets of Brno, and troops were called in. The carpenter František Pavlík was fatally wounded. On 2 October, the day he died, Janáček began this sonata.

3. 1:42
   Repeat of the opening paragraph

   The first paragraph is repeated with the same small leap, the same pauses and the same brief forte. A second ending takes the piano into new chords.

4. 3:00
   Tučková’s copy of the sonata

   At a rehearsal on the day of the 1906 première, Janáček burned the sonata’s third movement. He later threw the remaining manuscript into the Vltava. The pianist Ludmila Tučková kept her copy of the first two movements, which she brought forward in 1924, and they were then published.

5. 3:20
   Crescendo to fortissimo

   The melody keeps its clipped phrases. Below it the left hand plays quick figures, which spread into repeated chords. Successive crescendos take the piano from piano through forte to fortissimo.

6. 4:08
   Left-hand chords under melodic fragments

   The left hand’s rapid chords now continue through the right hand’s rests. Above them, the melody is reduced to accented fragments, some of only two notes.

7. 5:22
   Return of the opening phrase

   The opening phrase returns in E♭ minor, marked sforzando fortissimo. Its small leap is unchanged. The left hand plays continuous chords beneath it.

8. 6:28
   Final E♭ minor chord

   The returning phrases fall to a soft dynamic again. The last line reaches pianississimo, and for the final E♭ minor chord Janáček marks una corda, the piano’s soft pedal. The bass E♭ lies far below the closely packed notes above.

Joins

1. 1:42
   First ending and repeat

   The first ending thins to a held chord under the soft pedal. At the repeat the opening E♭ minor bass returns, with the small upward leap in the right hand and the short rest before the phrase.

2. 3:20
   The second ending and left-hand figures

   The second ending takes the piano past the repeat. Held bass notes support the clipped melody. The left hand then begins quick chord figures of its own between the melody’s phrases. The phrases still begin after rests, and the accompaniment fills more and more of the gaps between them.

3. 5:22
   Return of the opening melody

   A ritenuto slows the rapid left-hand chords. At a tempo the opening melody returns over an E♭ minor bass, marked sff. The left hand continues the moving chords of the middle section beneath it.

4. 6:28
   Closing bars in E♭ minor

   The right hand repeats the short falling phrases, and the left hand continues its quieter chords. Janáček brought the final line down to ppp and then wrote una corda over the last E♭ minor chord. The bass ends on a low E♭.