On an Overgrown Path, 2nd Set

Più mosso

Allegro - adagio

Vivo

The five earliest of the pieces eventually collected together in On an Overgrown Path were originally written for harmonium and were published as such in the 1901-2 issue of a periodical called Slav Melodies. It must have been during the course of writing these short pieces - with titles like Our Evenings and Good Night - that Janacek realised that he had found a way of expressing himself at the keyboard as he had never been able to do before. Certainly, by 1908 at the latest he had recovered five more overgrown memories from his past, all of them scored for the piano this time. It wasn’t until 1925, however, that all ten of them were published as the “short compositions for piano” of the First Set of On an Overgrown Path. As the titles of these later pieces suggest - Unutterable Anguish, for example, or In Tears - they are no less intimate and rather more passionate than those originally written for harmonium.

In 1911 Janacek started on a second set of short piano pieces of the same kind. Unfortunately, he wrote only three, one of which was never actually finished. So what is now known as the Second Set of On an Overgrown Path consists of the two pieces completed in 1911, two pieces rejected from the First Set and the unfinished 1911 piece: that at least is how they are presented in the Complete Critical Edition of 1978, although they are not always performed in that order.

None of the five pieces in the second set has a title. It would be an unwise commentator who, bearing in mind that the most cryptic piece in the first set is called Words Fail, would venture to suggest what they are about. It is clear, anyway, that they are very personal compositions. Unambitious in structure - they are nearly all in ternary form and none of them lasts as long as five minutes - they are deeply expressive in their characteristically eloquent utterances of fragmentary melodic phrases, their violently contrasting dynamics and their restless modulations. One of the most sustained melodies in the set is the one in the B minor middle section of the opening Andante in E flat major. The Allegretto in G flat major, on the other hand, is based on just two short phrases introduced in the opening bars: one rising and one falling, they persist throughout and become ever more insistent in the accelerating middle section.

The first of the two pieces left out of the First Set, eccentrically headed Più mosso (quicker than what?), is motivated by a little rhythmic figure which is heard twice in the first two bars. It is neatly integrated into the D major opening section and, after a tiny cadenza, introduces a tender melody rising over simple C major harmonies at the beginning of the first episode.The other reject from the first set is the longest and the most dramatic of all the fifteen pieces of On an Overgrown Path - which is why some pianist prefer to reserve it until the end of the set. Beginning as a fierce Allegro dance in C minor, it melts into a broadly expressed declaration in G flat major, while the dance rhythm drums on in the left hand. The dance tune is recalled, but only briefly, before the tempo is reduced to Adagio and the piece ends with the expansive material even more spaciously presented in C major. The unfinished Vivo in E flat major - which can be played just as it is, although most pianists fill in a few apparent gaps - retains its folk-dance character throughout.