In his bundled essays Testaments betrayed ("Les testaments trahis", 1993), Czech writer Milan Kundera devotes ample attention to his compatriot, composer Leoš Janácek. What begins as the report of a search for recordings of the latter’s music, culminates in a dissertation on the cultural nationalism of "small nations". Kundera describes the unique position held by Janácek in the history of European music. Janácek was born in 1854, six years before Mahler and no less than 10 years before Richard Strauss. That makes him one of the oldest of the "late-Romantics". But at the same time, he also belongs to the "modern" school. "For a long time he wrote compositions that – due to his allergy to the excesses of romanticism – are all distinguished by their emphatic traditionalism," Kundera alleges. "Ever dissatisfied, his life is dogged by a trail of torn-up scores; not until the turn of the century, did he fully develop his own style. In the ’20s, his compositions were included in concerts programming modern music, alongside Stravinsky, Bartók and Hindemith; yet he was born 30 or 40 years before them. After being a lone conservative during his youth, he became an innovator in his old age. But he still remains a loner. For although he throws in his lot with the great modernists, he differs from them. He achieved his own style without them, his modernism is of a different character, a different genesis; it stems from different roots."

The two works on this album are derived from both sides of the spectrum. The symphonic poem – Janácek himself called it a "rhapsody" – Taras Bulba, which dates from 1915-1918, is firmly rooted in the late-Romantic tradition of, most notably, Richard Strauss, to which his compatriots Vítezslav Novák and Josef Suk also belonged. The Glagolitic Mass from 1926-1927 – one of Janácek’s last works – is an audacious musical testament of creativity and originality.