Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 03/10/2010, uploaded on 07/27/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Having left Leipzig for Vienna in the fall of 1838, Robert Schumann found himself separated from his fiancée Clara. Though geographically separated from her, Robert continued to communicate with her in letter and, even more touchingly, in music. While it would be nigh impossible now to uncover whether the piano compositions that followed Schumann's arrival in Vienna were his way of remaining, not physically but in spirit, close to Clara, it is at least a safe assumption that they were, in part, just that.

Of those compositions, the Arabeske in C major of 1839 lends itself quite well to that interpretation. Cast in a rather straightforward rondo form, it alternates wistful passages with more intense and extroverted episodes. The lyrical opening melody in C major frames two minor key episodes—the first in E minor and the second in A minor. The episodes, though quite different in character, take their material directly from the C major principal theme. After the final statement of the principal melody, a beautiful Epilogue commences, ultimately drawing the work to a close with a final echo of the C major melody.

Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18                           Robert Schumann

The term "arabeske" evokes decorative Arabic architecture which in music translates to florid musical lines.  Schumann's Arabeske seems to flow right out of the Beethoven variations, beginning as if in mid-thought and navigating through several intervening episodes before making its most direct emotional impact in a sublime coda.       Michael Mizrahi

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.