Janáček: The Makropulos Affair / The Diary of One Who Disappeared

This release is a special tribute to Sir Charles Mackerras (1925–2010), who, among other outstanding achievements, was a superb interpreter of the music of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), whose music he championed in Great Britain for over six decades. The release includes a remastered recording from 1964 of Mackerras's first London staging of the opera "The Makropulos Affair," as well as Janáček's quasi-operatic song cycle "The Diary of One Who Disappeared." The audio restoration was carried out by Lani Spahr, whose previous restorations of works by Edward Elgar, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Holst, and Arthur Bliss recently received no fewer than three Gramophone Editor's Choices. Charles Mackerras’s breakthrough in introducing the unfamiliar music of Janáček to British audiences came in February 1964, when he conducted "The Makropulos Affair" at Sadler’s Wells. This release is an exciting, emotionally charged reminder of that first London production. The recording features the Australian dramatic soprano Marie Collier, an outstanding interpreter of this role. The vocal parts in the opera are predominantly dialogical, underpinned by orchestral music that is both uncompromisingly modern and reminiscent of bygone times. Janáček began composing "The Diary of One Who Disappeared" in 1917, a month after he met the nearly 40-years-younger Kamila Stösslová, with whom he fell in love, even though both were married. This unorthodox song cycle for tenor, alto, female voices, and piano was inspired by a diary in poem form about a village boy who falls in love with a girl named Žofka. This 1956 recording features Richard Lewis (tenor), Maureen Forrester (alto), singers from the BBC Singers, and the pianist Ernest Lush.