Word: ek
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...well as leaders of the composers' union have all been forced to resign. Some 300 journalists have been fired for harboring liberal tendencies. To undercut the bargaining position of Czechoslovakia's nine unions of artists, writers and other creative people, Minister of Culture Miroslav Bružek has declared that he will deal with members strictly on an individual basis. Only those who obey the party line will be given financial aid and permission to travel abroad...
...Only a cut above the amateur" was British Critic Ernest Newman's scornful evaluation of Czech Composer Leoš Janáček in a 1924 review of the opera Jenufa. "Atrocious drama and wretched theater," complained a New York Times critic after a 1931 performance of From the House of the Dead. Through years of such disasters,Janáček (pronounced Ya-na-chek) remained a proud, angry man who longed desperately for recognition and stubbornly believed that his peculiar brand of musicmaking would be vindicated. Now, four decades after his death, the often maligned composer...
...stunning revival of the Excursions of Mr. Brouček was a hit last summer at West Berlin's Deutsche Oper, as was the Stockholm Royal Opera's The Makropulos Case in Munich last month. The San Francisco Opera gave Jenufa its first professional performance last week on the West Coast. "Pile-driving drama," critics raved. "Music that stabs, jabs, spins, lunges, pecks, soars." This week 185 stations will carry National Educational Television's color production of From the House of the Dead, which is likely to provide an hour-and-a-half of emotional shock...
...ek's music sounds like nobody else's: short, choppy phrases, thorny melodies that blossom abruptly and are suddenly plucked away, trumpets and trombones that whoop with glee, orchestration that seems all top and bottom with a yawning gap in between...
...ek's nine operas seem appropriate to an age of revolt, space travel and biochemical revolution. From the House of the Dead, based on Dostoevsky's novel, broods over the futility of life in a prison camp. Mr. Brouček involves a flight to the moon (although the propulsive liquid is beer rather than rocket fuel) and a 15th century invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Makropulos Case tells of a 300-year-old woman who discovers the secret of eternal life and finds eternity not worth enduring...