Janáček: Taras Bulba

Description

The rhapsody for orchestra "Taras Bulba" is the most important and on account of its genesis the most interesting of the three programmatic orchestral works the composer wrote between 1914 and 1920. All three of these works were responses to the contemporary social and political context: "The Fiddler's Child" was an indictment of the state of society, "Taras Bulba" was a reaction to the international conflict of World War I, while "The Ballad of Blaník" was inspired by the birth of Czechoslovakia.