Memorial Medal to Mark Audus
- Awards
This year we commemorate the 170th anniversary of Leoš Janáček’s birth (1854–1928) and the 120th of the Brno première of Jenůfa. To mark the occasion, the Management Board of the Leoš Janáček Foundation has decided to award the 2024 Leoš Janáček Memorial Medals. On 20 November 2024, the Medal was awarded to the person who has made a significant contribution to the reconstruction of the première version of the opera Jenůfa as it was performed in 1904.
The British musicologist Mark Audus has devoted his professional career to the study of Leoš Janáček’s music. A student of John Tyrrell, he contributed to Prof Tyrrell’s extensive monograph on Janáček and has authored numerous programme notes for concerts featuring Czech music, particularly Janáček’s. These include “Bohemian Legends”, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša’s major concert series showcasing Dvořák, Janáček and Suk. Audus has also penned many reviews of recordings of Czech music. In collaboration with Sir Charles Mackerras, he edited Janáček’s operas for Universal Edition in London. His greatest achievement was the reconstruction of Jenůfa as it was premièred in Brno on 21 January 1904. This edition, The 1904 Version of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa: Sources, Reconstruction, Commentary, served as his PhD thesis and was later published by Universal Edition Wien. The version heard at the première was, among other things, longer: it had additional short orchestral interludes and sections that the composer cut or altered during later revisions. Thanks to Mark Audus’s meticulous work, audiences today can experience Jenůfa as theground-breaking masterpiece it was at its inception. This research is also valuable in that it helped to map the creative process and the difficulties Janáček went through, the result of which established his worldwide fame as the most performed Czech opera composer of the 20th century.
Mark Audus was awarded the Leoš Janáček Memorial Medal for merit in editing and popularising Janáček’s works.
Interview with Mark Audus about the edition:
