Had the weather had been good in the Czech Republic, circa July 1926, Janacek might never have written one of the most extraordinary choral works of the 20th century. Holed up in the spa town of Luhacovice with nothing to do, the composer set his mind to a setting of the Mass - but this was to be no ordinary one...

Donald Macleod introduces a performance of Janacek's remarkable "Glagolitic Mass", uniquely written to words in the medieval language of Old Church Slavonic, and presents a work once thought incomplete at the composer's death: his Violin Concerto, subtitled "Wanderings Of A Little Soul". Show less