Timothy West, Pavao String Quartet

Join this dramatic retelling of the passionate and illicit love affair that resulted in
one of the finest string quartets of the 20th century.

Having been ignored throughout his life by the Prague chattering classes as a country hick, the obstinate and determined Janácek achieved his first success at the age of 61 with Jenufa in 1916.

Janácek is as famous for his compositions as he is for his love life. At 25, he fell in love with one of his music pupils, Zdenka, who was just 14. He married her two
years later and then decided almost immediately that he no longer loved her. A year after his Jenufa triumph, he started sleeping with a singer 24 years his junior. He then became infatuated with Kamila Stösslova, a 35-year-old married woman with 2 children, who remained his obsession, and the subject of the String Quartet “Intimate Letters”, until his death in 1928.

In this dramatic recreation Timothy West reads the composer’s love letters chronologically placed between the movements of the composer’s magnificent 2nd string quartet.