Along an Overgrown Path

Memories of Janáček’s childhood in rural Moravia and of his daughter, Olga, who died aged 21 in 1903, permeate the 15 short piano works known as On an Overgrown Path. The 10 pieces of Book 1 eventually had titles attached to them, intended by Janáček as a guide to their mood or meaning. “Our Evenings” opens the cycle, and though seemingly pacific in tone, is subjected to stabbing disruptions, suggesting darker elements that the process of reminiscence uncovers. “A Blown-Away Leaf” is similarly ambivalent, the pristine innocence of the opening tune gradually deconstructed by agitated trilling and fractured phrases. “Come with Us!” and “They Chattered Like Swallows” are more upbeat and playful, but a troublingly introspective vein returns in the haunting piece concluding Book 1, “The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!” A fluttering motif like beating wings signals the presence of the owl, symbolic harbinger of death, and alternates with chorale-like chords offering a strange, fatalistic sense of consolation. Perhaps because they lack evocative titles, the five pieces of Book 2 are less often played by pianists. But they unquestionably inhabit the same flickeringly mutable landscape as Book 1, where memories are never straightforwardly happy, and beauty is always threatened.