Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 11/26/2014, uploaded on 05/04/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Even once Robert Schumann chose to pursue music over literature, his passions did not initially lie with composition. He first intended to become a concert pianist. However, a damaging injury to his right hand destroyed all hopes of his becoming a great virtuoso and it was at that time he turned his creative energies upon composition. Until 1840, Schumann composed almost exclusively for his own instrument, the piano, and it was during this time many of his most well-known compositions were written, among them, Papillions, Carnaval, Kinderszenen, and the Fantasiestücke, op. 12. Yet, even in composition Schumann did not neglect his love for literature and each of the above named works possessed in some form or fashion a literary inspiration.

Though only the title of opus 12 was inspired by literature, in this case an 1814 collection of novellas by one of Schumann’s favorite authors, E. T. A. Hoffman, entitled Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier, each of its eight pieces nevertheless bears a programmatic title. Schumann also constructed the work as a sort of dialogue between his conflicting alter egos—the extroverted and passionate Florestan and the dreamy, introspective Eusebius—with each of the eight pieces representing one of these imaginary characters. Composed in 1837, the Fantasiestücke is one of Schumann’s most finely crafted works.

Fourth in the set is Grillen (“Whims”). Whimsical and even marked Mit Humor (“With Humor”), the piece is certainly Florestan in a humorous mood and displays Schumann’s subtle use of rhythm to create the piece’s comical tone. Even the uncertain tonality, which seems to waver between B-flat minor and D-flat major, lends towards this mood. A move towards F minor in the second strain at first confirms the former. Yet, the sudden forte and A-flat major tonality of the next again leaves things uncertain. A G-flat major Trio provides a point of contrast in the piece’s ternary form. The reprise of the opening section is modified, namely to place the above mentioned passages in the keys of B-flat minor and D-flat major. Even approaching the final cadence, it is possible to remain uncertain as to which key Schumann will inevitably lead us, but it is the latter major tonality that ultimately concludes the piece.      Joseph DuBose

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Selections from Fantasiestücke, Op. 12      Robert Schumann

Written in 1837, the Fantasiestücke Op.12 was dedicated to Anna Robena Laidlaw, a gifted and attractive British pianist who had visited Leipzig in 1837 and with whom, it has been suggested, Schumann might have found some consolation for his then strictly enforced separation from Clara Wieck. Whatever the nature of his relationship with Ms. Laidlaw, the thematic identity of the first piece in the collection, Des Abends, gives a clear indication that Clara was still very much on the composer’s mind: the stepwise descending line delicately traced by the right hand in the opening bars is one of many variants of a melodic message Robert and Clara both understood. Its introduction here is all the more poignant for the insecurity of its apparently triple-time rhythms in a basically duple-time meter and its two modulations from D flat major to an unlikely E major. In accordance with the ‘Eusebius’ and ‘Florestan’ duality consciously cultivated by Schumann in both his critical writings and his music at this time, Aufschwung is as impulsive as Des Abends is dreamy. Although the contrast is compounded by the strict rondo form applied to the second piece, Schumann retains a link between them by including comparatively lyrical episodes in D flat and B flat major within an urgent F minor context. There is a similar contrast between the tender Warum in D flat major – a harmonically inspired reminder that Chopin had made a memorable visit to Leipzig in 1836 – and the intermittently gruff but mainly good-humored Grillen in the same key.     (Program notes by Gerald Larne)

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.