In the second series of her recordings of Robert Schumann's piano music, Jimin Oh-Havenith juxtaposes the Kreisleriana op. 16 from 1838 and the Humoreske op....

In the second series of her recordings of Robert Schumann's piano music, Jimin Oh-Havenith juxtaposes the Kreisleriana op. 16 from 1838 and the Humoreske op. 20, composed one year later, with two key works of the famous "piano decade" 1830-1840, in which Schumann pays homage to his two most important literary models, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul. While in the Kreisleriana, following in the footsteps of Hoffmann's alter ego, the ingeniously eccentric Kapellmeister Kreisler, he fuses suite and character piece into a fantastic pictorial arch, the Humoreske is laid out like an essay in tones. In it, Schumann congenially implemented Jean Paul's definition of humour as bridging the opposites of "Gemüt" (emotion) and "Witz" (wit) that shape and tear people apart. For every interpreter, therefore, it is a task as challenging as it is fulfilling to shape Schumann's language, which is so rich in contrast but nevertheless held together by subtle thematic and contrapuntal links, into a poetic cosmos.