Nicky Spence

Scofield: You were saying, The Diary of One Who Disappeared is usually considered to be kind of the creative fruit from the composer’s infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, which was unrequited and unconsummated. What do you see in that relationship between Janáček and Kamila?

Spence: I think Janáček had lived quite a difficult life when he met this lady in a spa town. He absolutely fell in love. It woke something within him creatively, which then actually gave us some of his best works, in terms of Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared, and Káťa Kabanová, and laterally From The House of the Dead near the end of his life. It’s something about the fact that it was unconsummated that he was able to almost stage his fantasies with this lady within his works and drama. That’s why there is always this kind of heroine within his music, even in The Makropulos Case, there’s so much life and pathos given to these central female characters, which I think really helped Janáček ‘s music become so alive, and really extremely honest and direct.

Scofield: Mm-hmm [Affirmative]. We could hear the obsessive quality in the music, I think it’s clear to everybody among our listeners who heard that this is definitely not your rumpty-tumpty Donizetti, and sillier Verdi, which you explained to us is not your style. In fact, you are performing a totally different type of repertoire. Your recitals and performances include composers like Wolf, and Martinů, another Czech composer, Bruckner, Philip Glass, and Dvořák. What is it about these composers that resonates with you so much?

Spence: I think it’s a lot to do with human interest, and the fact that these composers have stories to tell from their own point of view, which I think is very much condensed within their music. If you take Martinů, for example, he was in a way a refugee, so to get his music to a wider audience, he had to work so hard. And I think that you can really hear that he wasn’t hanging out with kings and queens in terms of commissions, and I really love the fact that he had to strive to have to give his music a window. I’m extremely attracted to composers that have had a life story, and maybe it’s the fact that my Celtic upbringing where we were singing on the hills, and evicted from our houses by the English 800 years ago, etc. There’s something about the misery of my Celtic history which tends to resonate with composers like Janáček and other countries who have had a similar kind of exile feeling.