Leos Janácek

Moravian composer Leos Janácek (1854-1928).
It was relatively late in life that Janácek won more than local recognition. He made his early career in the capital of his native province, Brno, coupling an interest in regional folk music with a study of speech intonations, echoed in his instrumental as well as vocal writing. His opera Jenufa was first staged in Brno in 1904, but it was a performance in Prague in 1915 that brought the work of the composer a much wider public. The best known of Janácek's music for orchestra is the Sinfonietta.