Robert Schumann and His Music Are So Full
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Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Robert Schumann obert Schumann and his music are so full what one would consider lightweight vehicles Rof surprises that it seems unfair to codify for showmanship, and most of their authors his life and achievements in terms of rehashed — Kalkbrenner, Thalberg, Herz, Pixis, and so truisms. And yet, Schumann himself did char- on — have slipped to the fringe of the reper- acterize his musical personality as the duality toire. Chopin’s two piano concertos (1829 and of his sub-egos, the fiery Florestan and the 1830) and Mendelssohn’s two (1831 and 1837) dreamy Eusebius (with a mediating Master were exceptions to the rule, to the extent that Raro), and his music’s emotions can often be they managed to combine more serious mu- broadly reduced to those extremes. sical content with audience expectations for It is also true, as few commentators fail to dazzling virtuosity. mention, that Schumann dedicated himself Between 1827 and 1839 Schumann made almost exclusively to specific genres for ex- four stabs at piano concertos, but he left all tended periods, exploring their every facet of them in fragmentary form. His quest to before moving on to mine other lodes. He find how his musical ideals might work in a had already dedicated himself exhaustively piano concerto began in earnest in May 1841, to piano music during the 1830s, and had when he composed a one-movement Phan- delved deeply into the Lied in 1840 before tasie for Piano and Orchestra. It received two trying his hand at symphonies (in 1841) and private run-throughs that August, with Clara embarking on an infatuation with cham- Schumann (by then his wife) as soloist and ber music, which occupied him from 1842 with their friend Felix Mendelssohn con- (starting with his three string quartets) until ducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. 1847 (when he produced his first two piano That was the last the Phantasie was heard, trios). Perhaps it was inevitable that, swept up in his chamber-music phase, Schumann In Short should combine his earlier achievements in piano writing with his new discoveries about Born: June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Germany the art of the string ensemble. From this im- Died: July 29, 1856, in Endenich petus grew two of chamber music’s greatest Work composed: masterpieces: Schumann’s Piano Quintet Late May–July 31, 1845, drawing partly on material composed in 1841 (Op. 44) and Piano Quartet (Op. 47), both written in 1842. World premiere: December 4, 1845, in Dresden, Schumann’s Piano Concerto traces its roots by the Orchester der Abonnementskonzerte to about the time when the composer’s inter- (Orchestra of the Subscription Concerts), Ferdinand Hiller (the work’s dedicatee), est in symphonies was yielding to his experi- conductor, Clara Schumann, soloist ments in chamber works for piano and strings. The composer himself viewed the genre of New York Philharmonic premiere: March concerto as something of a crossroads. In 26, 1859, Carl Bergmann, conductor, 1839 he had written to his then-fiancée, Clara Sebastian Bach Mills, soloist Wieck: “Concerning concertos, I’ve already Most recent New York Philharmonic said to you that I can’t write a concerto for vir- performance: October 21, 2017, András tuosi and have to think of something else.” At Schiff, conductor and soloist that time, piano concertos were nearly always Estimated duration: ca. 31 minutes 28 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC and Schumann’s attempts to publish it came way in which the soloist and the orchestra to naught. It was not revived until the 1960s, pursue their unified intent. Nonetheless, its and when it receives a rare performance today, rather transparent scoring stands in striking audiences can be surprised by its high quality. contrast to that of Schumann’s symphonies There was enough good in the Phantasie themselves, which can tend toward density to inspire still greater things. In the sum- in their textures. mer of 1845 Schumann set about revising There is more of Eusebius than of Flor- the Phantasie into the first movement of estan in this concerto. But, despite its lack of his full-scale concerto. What he produced superficial razzle-dazzle, Schumann’s only was not, in fact, a highly virtuosic piece full-fledged piano concerto quickly became — which is to say that, although great in- one of his most popular pieces, applauded terpreters find much to explore in it, its de- not only at its Dresden premiere but also, in mands are not overwhelmingly situated in short order, at concerts in Leipzig, Prague, the fingers themselves. Early listeners were Vienna, and (before long) everywhere else. struck by the extent to which the piano and the orchestra interacted, as opposed to the more Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, standard turn-taking of the forces in virtuoso two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two concertos of the day. This is a supremely trumpets, timpani, and strings, in addition “symphonic” concerto in the democratic to the solo piano. In the Composer’s Words In 1839 Schumann published an essay on the subject of piano concertos in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which he had founded five years earlier: [The] separation of the piano from the orches- tra is something we have seen coming for some time. Defying the symphony, contemporary piano-playing seeks to dominate by its own means and on its own terms. … This periodi- cal has, from its beginning, reported on just about every new piano concerto that has come along. There can hardly have been more than 16 or 17, a small number in comparison with for- mer days. Thus do times change. What once was regarded as an enrichment of instrumen- tal forms, as an important discovery, is now voluntarily abandoned. … And so we must await the genius who will show us in a new- er and more brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the Robert Schumann with his wife, Clara, in 1847, wealth of his instrument and his art, while the two years after she gave the premiere of his orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may Piano Concerto interweave its manifold facets into the scene. MARCH 2019 | 29.