Program Note
They were said to look ridiculous next to one another: Leoš Janáček, tubby, elderly, with a mane of silver hair, but very energetic; Kamila Stösslová, dark, large, blooming and about half his age. Yet nothing gave him greater pleasure than to take her about with him, referring to her, where he could, as his 'wife'. She wasn't, of course. Mrs Zdenka Janáčková, the legal spouse of Czechoslovakia's leading composer, sat glumly at home while her husband went gallivanting in Prague or the Moravian spa town of Luhacovice. It was there that in 1917 Janáček met Stösslová and her husand, David Stössel, an antique dealer. Janáček himself, after years of provincial obscurity, was revelling in his recent status as a celebrity following the success of his opera Jenufa at the Prague National Theatre. He was then 63. In the remaining 11 years of his life he poured out almost all the works for which he is now famous - another five operas, Diary Of One Who Disappeared, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass and, a few months before he died, a string quartet entitled Intimate Letters. It was dedicated to Kamila, and described their life together. The other works she inspired, he said, had been written "in hot ash...from things remembered" but Intimate Letters was "written in fire".
—John Tyrrell