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This study focuses on the programmatic aspects and reception of Leoš Janáček’s Suite (1877) and Idyll (1878), two suites for string orchestra which represent the peaks of the early period of his compositional work. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, they have been almost invariably regarded as pieces of absolute music. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that Suite and Idyll were regarded in programmatic terms by some of the contemporary critics attending their earliest performances, especially by Berthold Žalud (1856–1886), an important musical critic, Janáček’s friend and devoted admirer. Both compositions were generally interpreted as works in which the musical image of the Romantic landscape intermingles with that of Janáček’s inner self. The expressions and imagination of those programmatic interpretations draw on the period Czech pseudo-Romanticist fiction literature and corresponded with contemporary manners of Czech music criticism: the interpretation of new pieces of absolute music in programmatic terms. It is likely that the initial ideas underpinning the programmatic interpretations of the Suite and Idyll originated directly with Janáček.