SCHUMANN EDITION Liner Notes & Sung Texts
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SCHUMANN EDITION Liner notes & sung texts (p. 30 – p. 76) LINER NOTES CD1-3 year. Even after he had made his home in Dresden, his Piano THE SYPHONIES · OVERTURES · KONZERTSTÜCK Concerto, the Symphony in C, the incidental music to Manfred Even today Leipzig does not necessarily evoke associations with and Faust, the opera Genoveva (1850), the last two symphonies Robert Schumann among the music-loving public. Compared and many other compositions were first heard in Leipzig, or with the statues of Bach, Gellert, Leibniz and the young Goethe, performed there soon after the premiere, with the composer the stele in the Rossplatz park featuring a medallion portrait od present or even wielding the baton. Schumann looks all too modest to say nothing of the crumbling When Schumann visited Leipzig for the last time in the spring of neoclassical facade of Schumann’s one-time home in the 1852, he did so to direct the performance of his own works. The Inselstrasse. tragic circumstances which surrounded the composer’s final The most likely candidate for musical patron saint of Leipzig years, his mental illness and untimely death, appeared to would be Johann Sebastian Bach rather than Schumann. But the overshadow his late works, giving rise to a noticeable change in latter left an indelible imprint on the city’s musical life as, audience response. Even so the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra indeed, did Felix Mendelssohn, his contemporary and much- remained the chief interpreter of his symphonies and other admired friend. After a period of increasing neglect in the first orchestral works, largely thanks to the efforts of Carl Reinecke, half of this century, his orchestral work regained a firm place in its Kapellmeister over many years, and numerous guest the concert repertoire. The first important sign of a Schumann appearances by Clara Schumann. Reinecke was one of revival was the complete recording undertaken by Franz Schumann’s pupils at the Leipzig Conservatory, founded in Konwitschny (1901-1962) and the Leipzig Gewandhaus 1843. Clara Schumann, a native of Leipzig, made her debut as a Orchestra in 1960-61. Now released on CD, this comprises his pianist at the Gewandhaus when she was nine years old. Under four Symphonies, the “Sinfonietta” (Overture, Scherzo and her patronage, the Breitkopf & Härtel firm in Leipzig began to Finale Op.52), the Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, publish a complete edition of Schumann’s works in 1879. and the Overtures to Manfred and Genoveva. Later recordings It was only after 1900 that the composer’s orchestral include another complete symphonic cycle, conducted by Kurt compositions suffered a gradual decline in popularity while his Masur, and two large-scale vocal compositions: the opera more intimate lieder and keyboard pieces enjoyed high favour Genoveva (also under Masur) and the oratorio Das Paradies und in middle-class salons. Eminent conductors like Wilhelm die Peri (under Wolf-Dieter Hauschild). Schumann’s piano works Furtwängler and Bruno Walter continued to include Schumann’s and lieder, and parts of his chamber music have never fallen symphonies in their programmes, notably Nos. 1 and 4. out of favour with performers and audiences. The Konwitschny era saw the beginning of a revival which has Schumann first set foot on Leipzig soil in the spring of 1828, shown no signs of abating ever since. Konwitschny, who moving into student digs on the Brühl together with Emil regarded Anton Bruckner as his musical “god”, paid little Flechsig, his Zwickau friend. Reluctantly he enrolled at the law attention to Schumann in the early years of his tenure as school of Leipzig University, continuing his legal studies in Kapellmeister of the Gewandhaus, but later on he conducted a Heidelberg in 1829-30. But his true bent lay elsewhere, and so number of symphonies and concertos even though the credit he embarked on a musical career which brought him back to for most performances in the period 1950-60 must go to other Leipzig for a period of almost 15 years. The town noted for its conductors, primarily Helmut Seydelmann. The gramophone trade fairs, was also a thriving centre of the arts, providing an recordings of the symphonies and some other orchestral works agreeable natural and architectural setting for the budding are of abiding interest because they testify to Konwitschny’s composer. The Arab Coffee Tree Inn in the Fleischergasse musicianship and felling for the intrinsic strength and originality became his favourite haunt. It was there that he hit upon the of Schumann’s scores. Despite changes in interpretation, right idea of founding the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. From 1834 to to the “authentic” style of some modern conductors, his 1844, the year he left the town, he was the guiding spirit of this readings will not fail to impress the discerning listener. musical journal which still exists today, having survived the Incidentally, the motto which Konwitschny chose for his musical vagaries of time. As a writer on musical affairs, Schumann was activities in Leipzig was coined by Robert Schumann: “Respect is seeking to prepare the way for a “new poetic age”, his famous new, and treat unfamiliar names without prejudice.” essay on Chopin published in 1831 being something of an © Gerd Nauhaus opening shot. While the brilliant piano works and lieder of his early years had merely attracted the attention of the cognoscenti, the compositions which he produced in the 1840’s made a considerable impact on Leipzig’s musical life. During a visit to Vienna in 1838-39, he had “discovered” Schubert’s great symphony in C major, subsequently arranging for the score to be published and performed in Leipzig. He went on to make his mark as an orchestral composer in his own right when Mendelssohn conducted the first performance of the “Spring” Symphony in the March of 1841. A triumphant success, this work catapulted Schumann into the front ranks of German musicians. The Overture, Scherzo and Finale and the original version of the Symphony in D minor were introduced later that 1 95020 Schumann Edition CD4 his biographer Andreas Moser, dated August 5, 1898, Joachim CELLO CONCERTO IN A MINOR OP.129 broke his silence on the subject for the last time: “You ask me There were no supernatural visitations involved in the creation for information about a violin concerto by Schumann, the or publication of the Cello Concerto, which has been revered by manuscript of which is in my possession. I cannot speak of it cellists for nearly a century and a half and has become a without emotion, as it is a product of the last half-year before genuinely popular work in the last few decades. It was my dear master and friend became insane…“ composed in October 1850, begun about six weeks after The fact that it has not been published must convince you that Schumann took up his duties as Music Director in Düsseldorf it cannot be ranked with his many other glorious creations. A and fully orchestrated just two weeks later, about a week new violin concerto by Schumann – with what rejoicing it would before he began work on the Rhenish Symphony. (Posthumous have been greeted by all my colleagues! And yet my publication accounts for the high opus number of the Concerto) conscientious anxiety for the reputation of the beloved Early in 1854, in the first stages of the breakdown that led to his composer kept me from allowing this work to be printed, confinement, Schumann took out the still unpublished score of despite the great clamour for it on the part of numerous the Cello Concerto and began making corrections in it. That publishers. It must be acknowledged that a certain mental effort, according to Clara, “seemed to relieve him somewhat,” lassitude, a semblance of true intellectual energy, shows how and one might well imagine that immersion in this score would he tried to force matters. Certain parts (how could it be have such an effect, for it is not only lyrical in character, but otherwise!) give evidence of the composer’s deep feeling, but brimming over with song, at once sweetly elegiac and these contrast with the work as a whole in a way that is all the restorative. more distressing… Like many similarly constructed works, the Concerto has been “The first movement (in an energetic but not fast tempo, D described as being in three movements with clearly discernible minor, 4-4 time), reveals an aesthetic obstinacy, now taking a sections corresponding to the separate movements. The three violent onward urge, now dragging defiantly. The first tutti goes movements are linked together by a recitative-like bridge over effectively into a second tender theme written in a pure passage based on the “motto” theme enunciated in the work’s and beautiful mood. Genuine Schumann! But this does not opening, which also returns in fragmented form in the finale come to a spirited development, and reverts gradually to the and in its original form in the work’s only cadenza, near the end. faster tempo with bewildering passages which fail to achieve There is little of the conventional concerto feeling about this the desired brilliant climax of the solo part because of the work: for all the demands made on the soloist, it is not so much unidiomatic writing for the violin. The second tutti repeats in F a display piece as a vehicle for Schumann’s characteristic major the opening measures. In the following solo, which seems expressiveness (even in the passages filled with double stops), in the development almost too intimate for a violin concerto, with the intimate give-and-take of chamber music instead of there is sketched a beautiful organ point built up on the anything resembling the traditional contrast or struggle dominant of the principal key.