Robert Schumann 1810–1856

Jodi Levitz Carla Moore The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio 2 Robert Schumann 1810–1856 Märchenbilder Op.113* 1 I. Nicht schnell 3.29 2 II. Lebhaft 3.58 3 III. Rasch 2.32 4 IV. Langsam 5.26 Fünf Stücke im Volkston Op.102 † 5 I. Mit Humor 3.05 6 II. Langsam 3.21 7 III. Nicht schnell 4.13 8 IV. Nicht zu rasch 1.53 9 V. Stark und markiert 3.00 Piano Quintet in E flat Op.44° 10 I. Allegro brillante 9.04 11 II. In modo d’un marcia 7.50 12 III. Scherzo 4.51 13 IV. Allegro ma non troppo 7.06 59.48 The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio on period instruments * † ° Eric Zivian fortepiano (Franz Rausch, Vienna, 1841) ° Monica Huggett violin (Dutch [Cuypers School], circa 1770) † ° Tanya Tomkins cello (Joseph Panormo, London, 1811) *°Jodi Levitz viola (Andrea Ghisalberti, Parma, 1729) ° Carla Moore violin (Johann Georg Thir, Vienna, 1754) 3 When Robert Schumann finally married Clara Wieck on 12 September 1840, it marked the end of a long battle with Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, who considered the 30-year-old composer unfit for her. As Wieck’s arguments fell away and it became clear that the young lovers would soon be able to marry, Schumann entered an extraordinary phase of compositional productivity. During 1840 and into 1841 – known as the composer’s Liederjahr or ‘year of song’ – he composed no fewer than 125 Lieder, casting them off at white heat, sometimes at the rate of two a day. This prodigious activity continued into the next year, when he turned his mind to the orchestra, composing the First Symphony and the original version of the Fourth, along with the Overture, Scherzo and Finale and the piano Phantasie, which was to become the first movement of the Piano Concerto a few years later. Then, in 1842, he shifted his attention to chamber music. His three string quartets, Op.41, came first; then, wishing to write music for his wife to perform, he added the piano to the mix. The first result of this, the Piano Quintet, was to become his most enduring chamber work and the finest of his gifts to Clara. It was composed over a period of just a few weeks in September and October, and Clara gave the first performance at the family home in November, with the Gewandhaus Quartet led by the great violinist Ferdinand David. The Quintet was repeated at another private performance on 8 December: Clara had fallen ill shortly beforehand so the challenging piano part was, astonishingly, sight-read by Felix Mendelssohn, on whose advice Schumann made some structural changes prior to the work’s publication, adding a second trio to the Scherzo and inserting into the slow movement the agitato section to replace an original major-key passage in A flat. Clara had recovered in time to give the first public performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 8 January 1843. The work was an instant success and was published later that year; Berlioz – not usually thought of as a great exponent of chamber music – loved it, while Liszt crabbily dismissed it as ‘too Leipzigerisch.’ With the Piano Quintet, Schumann brought a small-scale, salon form into the concert hall, setting the template for quintets that would follow: by Brahms, Dvořák, Franck, up to Fauré, Elgar and Shostakovich. True, the combination of piano and string quartet had been used before – Mozart’s piano concertos, for example, were often arranged for this combination for domestic use, and Boccherini wrote two sets of six original piano quintets – but Schumann was the first to compose a new piece on a symphonic scale for this set of instruments. Earlier 19th-century quintets had tended to deploy one each of violin, viola, cello and double bass (Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet is perhaps the most famous, although there are also examples by J.L. Dussek, Hummel and Ries), but developments in instrument construction had led to the increased volume and strength of the piano, enabling it to hold its own against a standard string quartet. The Piano Quintet is in four movements, opening with an assertive Allegro brillante, its bold, chordal opening theme permeating not only this movement but the whole work, while the second subject, a conversation between cello and viola, oddly foreshadows the contours of Cole Porter’s song Who wants to be a millionaire?. The slow movement is a funeral march, the theme of which Mendelssohn would echo in his C minor Piano Trio of 1845, and the Scherzo is a breathtaking play of scales, ascending and descending and cascading into one another. The finale is the work’s tour de force, culminating in a cathartic coda in which the movement’s main theme is combined in an ingenious double fugue with the chordal theme of the opening movement. This contrapuntal inventiveness, coupled with the work’s irrepressible melodic generosity, makes it the finest of Schumann’s love songs to Clara and has ensured its enduring popularity. 4 Schumann never returned to the forms of string quintet or piano quintet but continued composing chamber music for friends, not least among them violin sonatas for Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim. In 1851 he composed the Märchenbilder (‘Fairy-Tale Pictures’) for viola and piano. The recipient of this set of four miniatures was the brilliant violinist Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, whom Schumann had persuaded to move from Leipzig to become leader of his Düsseldorf orchestra. The music itself gives little clue as to the particular fairy-tale scenes depicted in the piece – the movements are headed simply with German tempo markings – but Schumann’s journals suggest that the first two movements describe scenes from Rapunzel, the third Rumpelstiltskin and the fourth Sleeping Beauty. Nevertheless, Schumann’s alter egos Florestan and Eusebius are equally suitable candidates: the dreamy, introverted Eusebius in the outer movements, the more extrovert Florestan in the third, and the two characters in succession in the second. The Fünf Stücke im Volkston (‘Five Pieces in the Popular Style’ – but almost unavoidably known to British cellists by the Blytonesque nickname ‘Five Stuck in Folkstone’) dates from 1849, which Schumann was to refer to as his ‘most fruitful year.’ Having spent much of 1848 working on his sole opera, Genoveva, it was imperative that he spend much of the following year writing smaller pieces to bring in much-needed income. Thus he created works, among others, such as the Fantasiestücke, Op.73 (for clarinet, violin or cello with piano), the Three Romances, Op.94 (for oboe, clarinet or violin with piano) and the Fünf Stücke for cello and piano. These latter represent a break from Schumann’s usual highly personal idiom and an attempt to write music ‘for the people’ – a task he evidently didn’t find quite so conducive, as these pieces took him much longer to write than the other sets of miniatures. The roustabout first piece gives way to a lullaby that rocks gently to irregular phrase-lengths; the pastoral central piece recalls the Heine song ‘Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet’ (‘In my dream I wept’) from Schumann’s Dichterliebe. The fourth piece is once again more outgoing, while the finale injects a far more dramatic and uncertain note into the mini-cycle. Ꭿ David A. Threasher, 2016 Als Robert Schumann am 12. September 1840 endlich Clara Wieck heiraten konnte, ging der lange Kampf mit ihrem Vater Friedrich Wieck vorbei, der den 30-jährigen Komponisten als unpassende Partie für seine Tochter betrachtete. Als Wieck den beiden nichts mehr entgegenzusetzen hatte und sich abzeichnete, dass die jungen Liebenden bald würden heiraten können, begann für Schumann eine Phase außerordentlicher kompositorischer Schaffenskraft. Im Jahr 1840 – seinem „Liederjahr“ – schrieb er in atemberaubendem Tempo nicht weniger als 125 Lieder, manchmal sogar zwei an einem Tag. Diese ungeheure Aktivität hielt bis ins Folgejahr an, als er sich der Orchestermusik zuwandte und seine Sinfonie Nr. 1, die ursprüngliche Fassung der Sinfonie Nr. 4 sowie sein op. 52 Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale und die Phantasie für Klavier komponierte, die einige Jahre später den ersten Satz seines Klavierkonzerts bilden sollte. 1842 schließlich richtete Schumann seine Aufmerksamkeit auf die Kammermusik. Zuerst komponierte er seine drei Streichquartette, op. 41; da er Musik schreiben wollte, die seine Frau aufführen konnte, nahm er in die Mischung der Instrumente noch das Klavier mit auf; sein erstes 5 Werk für diese Besetzung, das Klavierquintett, sollte sein bewährtestes Kammermusikwerk und sein schönstes Geschenk an Clara werden. Es entstand innerhalb nur weniger Wochen im September und Oktober 1842, und Clara spielte es zum ersten Mal im November im Hause der Familie mit dem Gewandhaus-Quartett unter der Führung des großen Violinisten Ferdinand David. Am 8. Dezember wurde das Quintett erneut im privaten Rahmen aufgeführt: Da Clara kurz vorher erkrankt war, übernahm Felix Mendelssohn den anspruchsvollen Klavierpart, den er erstaunlicherweise vom Blatt spielte. Hinterher nahm Schumann auf Mendelssohns Anraten vor der Veröffentlichung des Werks strukturelle Änderungen vor. Er komponierte ein zweites Trio für das Scherzo und ersetzte im langsamen Satz eine ursprüngliche As-Dur-Passage durch den Agitato-Abschnitt. Clara erholte sich rechtzeitig, um am 8. Januar 1843 die erste öffentliche Aufführung im Leipziger Gewandhaus zu geben. Das Werk wurde im Handumdrehen zum Erfolg und wurde später in jenem Jahr veröffentlicht; Hector Berlioz – der gemeinhin nicht als großer Vertreter von Kammermusik gilt – war hingerissen, während Franz Liszt es miesepetrig als „zu Leipzigerisch“ abtat. Mit dem Klavierquintett brachte Schumann eine kleinformatige Salongattung in den Konzertsaal und steckte den Rahmen für die Quintette ab, die andere Komponisten nach ihm schreiben sollten: Brahms, Dvořák und Franck bis hin zu Fauré, Elgar und Schostakovitsch.

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