Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was a Czech composer whose late flowering produced some of the most original music of the early twentieth century. Born in Hukvaldy, he spent much of his life in Brno and drew deeply on Moravian speech, song and rhythm.

His works include operas such as Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen and From the House of the Dead, as well as the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, string quartets and piano music.

Janáček’s style is terse, intense and speech-driven, with short motifs that seem cut directly from human utterance. His music can be abrupt, tender, fierce and luminous in the space of a few bars.

Recognition came late, but his final decades transformed his place in modern music. Janáček sounds like no one else: a composer who found opera in the pulse of spoken life.