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Sinfonietta

Of all the long novels I've managed to finish, 1Q84 might be the one I enjoyed the least. Despite that, I am much obliged to Murakami for his prominent mention of Leos Janáček's 'Sinfonietta' in the book's opening pages. Until reading about it there, I'd hitherto failed to pay due attention to the piece. Supposedly, Janáček intended the music to express "contemporary free man, his spiritual beauty and joy, his strength, courage and determination to fight for victory," but, for me, its bold and slightly off-kilter fanfares conjure up a sense of otherwordliness in tune with the themes of Murakami's novel, so the novelist's referencing it there didn't strike me as gratuitious. Janáček, however, does much more with his twenty-odd minutes of music than Murakami manages with 900+ pages of prose.

I have it in a 1971 recording from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa. It's paired with an older performance of the same composer's 'Taras Bulba' by a different orchestra & conductor, on a 1980 re-issue put out by the budget 'Classics for Pleasure' label. Presumably the image on the cover is meant to illustrate Taras Bulba, rather than anything relating to the 'Sinfonietta'. There will doubtless be stronger performances of it out there than Ozawa's with the CSO, but I find this one perfectly satisfactory. 

Janáček's story is one of the great examples of success late in life. Having toiled away in provincial obscurity for decades, he belatedly found fame & acclaim in 1916, when in his early 60s, thereafter producing a flurry of idiosyncratic masterpieces in his final twelve years. 

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