It was in 1842, his ‘year of chamber music’ that Robert Schumann took on the combination of violin, cello and piano for the first time. He seems to have decided against releasing the resulting Fantasiestücke as a fully-fledged piano trio, however, but later returned to the work, revising it for publication in 1850. The model here is not the large-scale, quasi-symphonic trios of Beethoven or Schubert – instead Haydn’s characteristic trio textures spring to mind, especially in the first two movements where the cello largely follows the piano’s left-hand bass line. By the time the Fantasiestücke was published, Schumann had already written two ‘proper’ piano trios, No. 1 in D minor and No. 2 in F major. According to the composer the second of these ‘makes a friendlier and more immediate impression’ but it is in fact the D minor trio that has long been the more popular: passionate, mainly extrovert and bursting with fine thematic material it is the easiest to grasp on one hearing. Both works are filled to capacity with imitative writing, sometimes conspicuously so but often subtly as if on a subconscious level – an aspect that the members of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, with more than 20 years of playing together, are able to make the most of.

AllMusic praised The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio’s “intensity, commitment, and unfettered navigation of Schumann’s scores.” This release is the third in the ensemble’s series dedicated to the works of Robert Schumann (1810-1856). This volume features Schumann’s most influential chamber work, the Piano Quintet in E flat Op. 44. The piece, which was premiered in 1843, is remembered for it’s “extroverted, exuberant” character. It is considered one of Schumann’s finest works. The ensemble performs here on period instruments, which enhances the recording by creating the intimate atmosphere for which this chamber music was written. Fanfare Magazine writes that the atmosphere creates “an enlightened view of the music.” The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio is pianist Eric Zivian, performing here on a Franz Rousch 1841 fortepiano, violinist Monica Hugget, performing on a 1770 Dutch, and cellist Tanya Tomkins, playing on an 1811 Joseph Panormo.

Robert Schumann’s literary background and cultivated taste is revealed in his choice of texts for musical setting. The emphasis in this collection is on songs with a narrative character, such as the tragic tale of Die feindlichen Bruder in which two brothers kill each other in a duel for love of the same girl. Further stories are drawn from those by Hans Christian Andersen. In around 1850 Schumann embarked on a series of melodramas with dramatic spoken dialogue over musical accompaniment. Notable among these lurid tiles of murder and retribution is the Ballade vom Haideknaben.

This Schumann album marks the collaboration between CuGate Classics and Georgian pianist Dudana Mazmanishvili. It contains a tremendous reading of the “unplayable“ Toccata and well-considered examinations of two further romantic masterpieces by Schumann. The album closes with a world premiere recording: Lagidzes Rondo Toccata, which builds a highly virtuoso bridge to the Schumann Toccata, sprinkling some Georgian spice over the German romantic repertoire. The Georgian born pianist, Dudana Mazmanishvili, received her first piano lessons, at age 3, from her mother Tamar Apakidze. Three years later she was accepted into the Central Music School for Talented Children in Tbilisi. Since 1998 she has been a student of Prof. Elisso Virsaladze at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Munich. In 2005 she began her studies with the American pianist Jerome Rose in New York. She has received master-classes from Earl Wild, Dmitri Bashkirov, Paul Badura-Skoda, Boris Berezovsky, Claude Frank, etc. She is a prize-winner of numerous international piano competitions, including the 2005 Washington International Piano Competition. Other noteworthy successes were the Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition in Paris, where she was awarded the top prize. In 1998-2001, she received the annual Honorary Prize awarded by the President of Georgia to talented young Georgians.

The Emerson String Quartet makes it PENTATONE debut with a recording of Schumann’s three string quartets. Penned in the summer of 1842 during an exceptional peak of creativity, these quartets formed the beginning of a six-month surge during which most of Schumann’s best chamber music saw the light. Inspired by the example of Beethoven, Schumann’s quartets display a mastery of traditional forms, combined with typically Schumannian fantasy and lyricism, particularly in the inner movements. As such, they underline a new level of maturity in Schumann’s artistic development, surpassing the fantastical aesthetic of previous years. The players of the Emerson String Quartet lift out the extraordinary freshness and originality of these works, and add another master composer’s quartet oeuvre to their impressive discography, after having recorded the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartók, Webern and Shostakovich. The artistic strength of Schumann, whose life was dominated by alternating periods of depression and manic creativity, inspires and consoles the quartet members during the uncertain times of a pandemic, and his music may equally inspire listeners. Since its foundation in 1976, the Emerson String Quartet is ranked among the world’s most acclaimed chamber music ensembles.

Ella van Poucke. Winner of the prestigious Premio Chigiana 2017 and recently awarded the Grachtenfestival Prize, the 27 year old Dutch cellist belongs to the top rank of today's generation of cellists. She is the first prize winner of the International Isang Yun cello competition 2015, the Leopoldinum Award 2015, Prix Nicolas Firmenich 2013,Elisabeth Everts Award 2014, Prix Academie Maurice Ravel 2012, Dutch Musician of the Year 2012, first prize winner of the 2008 Princess Christina Competition and recipient of the special prize in “recognition of an outstanding performance at the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann 2014.Schumann composed his Cello Concerto in about two weeks during November 1850. Before Schumann, few major composers had written cello concertos. Schumann avoids technical display for its own sake, allowing his characteristic poetic expression, intimacy and fantasy to prevail. Schumann originally scored the Fantasiestücke Opus 73 (1849) for clarinet and piano but simultaneously provided alternative arrangements for violin or cello. In his choice of clarinet Schumann was typically innovative. The three pieces are melodically interrelated, creating a unity underlined by the absence of breaks between them. Schumann's Adagio and Allegro in A flat major, Opus 70 dates from a week after the Fantasiestucke Opus 73. He originally intended his Opus 70 for the new valve horn, though he named cello, violin or viola as alternative instruments. The piece is fully characteristic of Schumann's Romantic spirit. The expansive and dreamily romantic Adagio gives way to an Allegro with a leaping, joyful main theme. Just as Schumann had wanted “popular elements” to prevail in his Rhenish Symphony (1850), the Fünf stücke im Volkston (1849) are correspondingly simple, tuneful and accessible. Nevertheless Schumann's creative imagination and wide expressive range are no less apparent.

Raoul Steffani writes: “The album you have here is the culmination of a long-cherished desire – a program devoted to both Robert and Clara Schumann and the musical dialogue that blossomed between them during the early years of their married life, through their poems and song compositions. I am absolutely delighted and grateful for the opportunity to record this program along with a selection of Robert Schumann’s most beautiful duets, in a truly luxurious pairing with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and my regular piano accompanist Gerold Huber.”

Jörg Demus died a few weeks ago at the age of ninety. MDG commemorates this great pianist with a new release of the Fantasiestücke op. 12 and Humoreske op. 20 by Robert Schumann, to whose music Demus felt drawn throughout his life. Performed on a Viennese pianoforte by Conrad Graf and recorded with the finest digital technology even more than thirty years ago, this program documents his tireless advocacy of historical keyboard instruments. The name “Fantasiestucke” contains a program. With ETA Hoffmann’s writings as their model, these “Fantasy Pieces” create a whole cosmos of romantic associations. Even the titles of the individual pieces suggest yearning for the faraway: “In the Night,” “Fable,” “Dream’s Confusion”- fantasy spreads its wings and rises in flight. Schumann is found in his entirely in the “Grand Humoresque,” as the composer described it to Clara; laughter, mixed with tears: “Everything is beautifully depicted in my op. 20.” Jord Demus, who was at home on the concert stage from the age of sixteen, brilliantly understood how to bring audiences closer to “Eusebius and Florestan,” the two souls in Schumann’s heart. His death is a great loss.

This new release features three of the greatest piano works by Schumann, superbly performed on fortepiano. DAVID HYUN-SU KIM has distinguished himself as one of the most thoughtful and distinctive musicians to emerge from the newest generation of American pianists. His concerts have been praised as “emotionally expansive” and “idiomatically perfect,” his interpretations as “spectacular,” and his Schumann playing has been singled out as “splendid and moving … His Florestan was elegantly calamitous, and his melodies representing Eusebius were like a dear friend whispering arcane truths to only you.” A sought-after pedagogue and adjudicator, David has taught at Yale and Harvard Universities. His students have gone on to win prizes in international competitions and been accepted for graduate study at Eastman, Oberlin, the University of Michigan, CCM, Indiana University, and similar institutions.

Robert Schumann’s songs are not only one of the high points of musical Romanticism, they also represent a unique marriage of words and music. Not since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s pioneering recording in the 1970s has there been a singer who has explored Schumann’s entire lieder output in such detail. As one of the foremost lieder singers of our day, Christian Gerhaher has gone even further than Fischer-Dieskau and together with his brilliant pianist Gerold Huber has realized one of his dearest wishes after more than three decades of intensive engagement with Schumann’s music.

Their 11-CD edition of Robert Schumann: The Complete Songs will be released on September 3, 2021 and will be available digitally as well. A co-production between Sony Classical and BR-KLASSIK, with the support of the International Song Centre Heidelberg, initiated by the Heidelberger Frühling music festival, this set features 299 songs – almost the whole of the composer’s lieder output. The approach adopted by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber is artistic and biographical rather than encyclopaedic. Schumann famously focused on lieder composition during two periods in his life: 1840–41 and 1849–53. By analogy with this focus, the first six CDs are devoted to the earlier period, the remaining five to the later years. Within this arrangement, Gerhaher and Huber have consciously eschewed a purely chronological or purely thematic approach, their aim being to preserve what for Schumann himself was the essential unity of his song cycles and to embed the individual songs within a chronological and thematic inner context. The songs that Schumann wrote during his youth and that were not published during his lifetime have not been included in this project. Also omitted are the melodramas and the works that deviate from classical song form or that are a part of much longer works. In the wake of these recordings, Gerhaher has also subjected his earlier Schumann releases to a critical overhaul. The bulk of the songs that appeared in his earlier albums Dichterliebe and Melancholie in 2004 and 2007 respectively have been re-recorded (among these songs are Dichterliebe op. 48 and the Sechs Gedichte und Requiem op. 90); conversely, other earlier recordings, including the Eichendorff Liederkreis op. 39, have been taken over into the present set. This unique project acquires an extra appeal as a result of new recordings of the cycles for female voice, the rarely heard duets and trios and works for several voices such as the Spanisches Liederspiel op. 74, in which Schumann raised the medium to a whole new artistic level. Among the other eminent artists featured in this edition are Sibylla Rubens, Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Martin Mitterrutzner, Christina Landshamer and Anett Frisch.

The extensive booklet includes all the song texts together with an introduction by the German musicologist Laurenz Lütteken, while Gerhaher himself has set down his personal thoughts on the individual songs. A detailed index completes the documentation. These recordings were supported by the Robert Schumann Research Centre in Düsseldorf.

REVIEWS:

A wonderful achievement and a marvel of sustained artistry: subtle, intelligent performances, impeccably prepared and movingly executed.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, October 2021)

It’s undoubtedly a fine, constantly rewarding set, with every song delivered with the fastidious attention to detail and to the individual coloring of each phrase that has always been a feature of Gerhaher’s lieder singing.

– Guardian (UK)

In 1849, a year during which political upheavals still resonated across Europe, Schumann wrote three song cycles which combined solo songs, duets and quartets. He turned again to the works of a favorite poet, Friedrich Ruckert, for Minnespiel, with its underlying religious theme, of which three of the eight settings are heard on this recording- a charming Spring setting, a duet, and the final quartet. Both Spanish cycles imply dramatic narratives between a girl and a boy. In Spanisches Liederspiel the music in places evokes Spanish rhythms such as the bolero, while its sequel, Spanische Liebeslieder, advances the cycle concept by employing piano duet accompaniment.

SCHUMANN Davidsbündlertänze. Papillons. Arabesque • Denys Proshayev (pn) • PIANO 0057 (59:20)


Davidsbündlertänze represents the high point of inspiration among Schumann’s sets of short piano pieces, as Dichterliebe does among his song cycles. The wit, variety, technical innovation, melodic inspiration, and artful, sometimes jolting segués between pieces (or songs) in both works make them Schumann’s finest collections.


While Davidsbündlertänze may sound randomly kaleidoscopic, it’s actually purposefully structured, as 12 dances are balanced by six pieces of either lyrical or stormy character. Davidsbündler’s 18 pieces, like Dichterliebe’s 16 songs, cohere as a cycle and neither work can be successfully excerpted.


The Belarus-born pianist Denys Proshayev is a sympathetic guide to Davidsbündlertänze ’s structure, slightly downplaying the speed and extroversion of a few of the pieces (nos. 9 and 10), and lavishing the longest, most introverted movement, no 7, with his most tender touch and patient pacing. It, and the other “Eusebian” pieces, become the emotional focus of the cycle. Throughout, he plays with a real sense of caprice, employing a daring amount of rubato that either feels convincing (no. 1) or tugs at the music too much (no. 4). Proshayev clearly has a top-level technique, though it’s not on display, but employed at the service of his total identification with Schumann’s music.


His performance of Papillon s is full of energy, giddy and impulsive compared to Wilhelm Kempff’s straighter pacing in the last performance of the work that I reviewed. Both performances communicate affection and a dance feeling, though Proshayev is the showier dancer. This easily recommendable Schumann disc ends with the ubiquitous Arabesque in a beautiful, calm reading. Piano Classics’ sound is good, on the bright side.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

A WQXR-FM Best Classical Recording of 2019

With Myrthen, baritone Christian Gerhaher, winner of the 2019 Male Singer of the Year from Opus Klassik, embarks on the second chapter of his once-in-a-lifetime project: the complete recording of Robert Schumann’s lieder output.

Since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s epoch-making recording of the 1970s, no singer has devoted himself more thoroughly to the lied output of Robert Schumann than Christian Gerhaher. Lauded as the greatest lied singer of our time, he launched his complete cycle of Schumann’s lieder with the album Frage, for which he was named Opus Klassik’s 2019 Male Singer of the Year. The complete recording is the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream and, he emphasises, “probably the most important project of my life”. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung spoke of “consummate vocal artistry. Gerhaher has opened a new door in lied interpretation”. The Guardian named it one of the year’s best new classical releases.

As always, Gerhaher is accompanied by the equally brilliant pianist Gerold Huber. Most of the lieder he will sing himself, but for the other parts, duets and ensembles he has invited singers from his intimate circle of friends who number among the best in their vocal category, including Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Sibylla Rubens, Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Martin Mitterrutzner.

The complete project will encompass ten CDs, to be issued in a boxed set in 2020. Gerhaher himself is in charge of the project’s conception. Besides Sony Classical, with which he has held an exclusive contract since the onset of his career, he has managed to gain two of his longstanding partners as co-producers in this lavish undertaking: Bavarian Radio and the Heidelberg Spring Festival’s International Song Centre, whose goal is to make artists, concert organisers and audiences alive to the relevance of art song today. Both partners will lend media support to the project.

In the second instalment Gerhaher, Hubert and the Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling will devote themselves to the song cycle Myrthen (Myrtles). It was composed in 1840, Schumann’s “year of song”, when most of his works for voice and piano originated. Conceived as a wedding present for his fiancée Clara Wieck (2019 marks the bicentennial of her birth), Myrthen contains settings of words by nine different poets. As Gerhaher stresses in his notes for the recording, the poems are tightly interrelated in their contents. The sequence Schumann selected creates “not just a picture-book”, Gerhaher writes, “but an anticipatory narrative of the path longed for and awaited by two lovers”, producing “one of the loveliest presents ever bestowed by a loving heart upon another”.

It was in this spirit that Schumann handed Myrthen to Clara on 12 September 1840 in a specially produced luxury edition. Since then it has numbered among the great song cycles in music history.

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REVIEWS:

Tilling’s bright, flexible sound is a perfect foil for Gerhaher’s honeyed warmth. Highlights dotted through the disc include Gerhaher’s performance of Byron’s Aus den Hebräischen Gesängen, with its chromatic, almost Schoenbergian piano introduction. Overall, the disc certainly maintains the standard set by the first one.

– Guardian (UK)

Christian Gerhaher is a deeply impressive singer, as fine as any baritone around in this repertoire. He is expertly accompanied as ever by Gerold Huber, and there is clear well-balanced sound, a very interesting booklet note on the cycle by Gerhaher himself, and full texts and translations.

– MusicWeb International

Written during the late stages of a courtship fraught by opposition from Clara’s father, these 26 songs exalt in the transcendent power of love, and are voiced with exquisite tenderness by German baritone Christian Gerhaher and his partners.

– WQXR-FM 105.9, NYC (Zev Kane)

For her new album, cellist Sol Gabetta has turned her attention to works by Robert Schumann. She is accompanied in his renowned cello concerto by period instruments of the Kammerorchester Basel and in the three sets of chamber works for cello and piano she teams up with Bertrand Chamayou playing an original fortepiano. As an admirer of Gabetta’s playing and having enjoyed her previous releases, I set about listening to this album with much enthusiasm.

Gabetta performs with passion throughout and excels with playing of conviction in the passages requiring brilliant virtuosic display. I enjoyed the generous Romanticism of the central movement marked Langsam with Gabetta expressing the characteristic songlike lyricism imbued in the score. At times, the writing feels like a love letter to Clara. In the closing movement, Sehr lebhaft, Gabetta’s striking playing is decisive with a sense of urgency. Playing a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Parma (1749) cello, Gabetta has been provided with recorded sound which is a touch too close for my taste. The Kammerorchester Basel, under Giovanni Antonini’s direction generally does full justice to Schumann’s orchestral writing but I find the louder passes slightly harder to judge as some of the detail is lost.

Gabetta has also included here three captivating sets of Schumann’s pieces for cello and piano, all written in 1849: the Five Pieces in Folk Style (Fünf Stücke im Volkston) for cello and piano, Op. 102, the Adagio and Allegro in the original version for cello and piano, Op. 70, and Three Fantasy Pieces (Fantasiestücke) in the original version for cello and piano, Op. 73. Here, Gabetta plays a Matteo Goffriller, Venice (c. 1725) cello and is accompanied Bertrand Chamayou using a fortepiano by J.B. Streicher, Vienna (1847). Gabetta’s performance is passionate and again her rich sounding cello is closely recorded and is balanced to slightly dominate the fortepiano. Although Chamayou’s fortepiano is of the period, I find it hard to enjoy its woody sound.

The booklet essay, entitled ‘Violoncello Works by Robert Schumann’ and written by Ruth Seiberts, is commendable.

– MusicWeb International (Michael Cookson)

Wife of Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck Schumann was a great piano virtuoso. She also was a wonderful composer of piano works. Korean-born pianist Junghwa Lee brings these works to life with vital performances. Junghwa Lee performs actively in solo recitals, chamber concerts and lecture recitals, and has frequently appeared in concerto performances as a soloist including those with the Korean Symphony Orchestra, Salina Symphony Orchestra, Hutchinson Symphony Orchestra and Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra among others. Lee has presented solo performances in Korea, Holland, France, Hungary, Romania, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, including appearances at the Arts Center Concert Series at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, Shenyang Music Cultural Exchange Exhibition Between China and Foreign Countries Festival in China, Beethoven 32 Sonatas Recital Series in Singapore, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center and her New York debut recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as a winner of Artists International’s Special Presentation Award.