Editing Leoš Janáček (section)

=== Russia ===
Janáček's deep and lifelong affection for Russia and Russian culture represents another important element of his musical inspiration.<ref name=Krombholc>{{cite AV media notes |title=Leoš Janáček: Katya Kabanova (Prague National Theatre, Jaroslav Krombholc)|page=6 |type=CD |publisher=Supraphon |id=108016-2612 |location=Prague }}</ref> In 1888 he attended the Prague performance of [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]]'s music, and met the older composer. Janáček profoundly admired Tchaikovsky, and particularly appreciated his highly developed musical thought in connection with the use of Russian folk motifs.{{sfn|Štědroň|1946|p=132}} Janáček's Russian inspiration is especially apparent in his later chamber, symphonic and operatic output.<ref name=Krombholc /> He closely followed developments in Russian music from his early years, and in 1896, following his first visit to Russia, he founded a ''Russian Circle'' in Brno. Janáček read Russian authors in their original language. Their literature offered him an enormous and reliable source of inspiration, though this did not blind him to the problems of Russian society.<ref name=Krombholc /> He was twenty-two years old when he wrote his first composition based on a Russian theme: a melodrama, ''Death'', set to [[Mikhail Lermontov|Lermontov's]] poem. In his later works, he often used literary models with sharply contoured plots.<ref name=Krombholc /> In 1910 Zhukovsky's ''Tale of Tsar Berendei'' inspired him to write the ''Fairy Tale for Cello and Piano''. He composed the rhapsody ''Taras Bulba'' (1918) to [[Nikolai Gogol|Gogol's]] short story, and five years later, in 1923, completed his first string quartet, inspired by [[Leo Tolstoy|Tolstoy's]] ''[[The Kreutzer Sonata|Kreutzer Sonata]]''. Two of his later operas were based on Russian themes: ''Káťa Kabanová'', composed in 1921 to [[Alexander Ostrovsky]]'s play ''The Storm'', and his last work, ''From the House of the Dead'', which transformed [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoevsky]]'s vision of the world into an exciting collective drama.<ref name=Krombholc />{{rp|7}}