Intimate Letters
Choreography by Petr Zuska
Music: Leoš Janáček, String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters”
Stage design by Petr Zuska
Costumes by Pavel Knolle
Lighting design by Petr Zuska
Musical direction by Zemlinsky Quartet
Length: 25 minutes
Leoš Janáček composed the string quartet Intimate Letters shortly before his death in 1928, inspired by his long-standing love affair with a married woman forty years his junior. We could perceive this work as a kind of musical performance of their written correspondence.
However, in my interpretation of this opus, I have abandonded the aforementioned intrinsic motive or story and decided to follow a completely free and uninfluenced path, led only by the one thing that matters – the music.
This living, pulsating and changing organism is a theme and a story of its own.
An elusive web of relationships, destinies and threads between us, a complicated labyrinth of our souls, something that cannot be named.
Everything is in constant motion, nothing lasts forever and nothing will ever be repeated.
A rapidly disappearing palm print on glass, a fleeting imprint of our presence in space and time.
Dedicated to Ivan Dunovsky
27 February 2022
Petr Zuska