Robert Schumann: Concert pour Piano seul - Fantasy Pieces

CONCERT POUR PIANO SEUL (CONCERT FOR PIANO ALONE)
Original version of the 3rd piano sonata op.14,
from the autograph in the British Library, London

Robert Schumann lives on perhaps primarily in his compositions for the piano. There is therefore no need to ignite a dispute with the song and song composer, especially since Schumann's after-effects have experienced a certain smoothing and simplification. This can also be seen from the fact that his most grandiose, boldest, and also most richly composed composition for the piano is overshadowed by those that have become more famous.

And there is no doubt that Schumann's 3rd piano sonata does not match any of his other piano compositions in terms of inventiveness, not only in the harmonic combinations. The gameplay challenges are enormous, but they are not of the kind that produce audience effects. The utmost in fantasy is presented here that romantic piano music has to offer.

Based on the earliest drafts, Schumann's three piano sonatas are related to one another. Their introduced numbering is based neither on dates of origin nor on dates of publication. It was only late (1853) that Schumann made the decision to classify the F minor work as a sonata at all. His Opus 14 exists, details aside, in three widely differing versions that have accompanied him throughout most of his quarter-century of creativity. The three main stations are:

1. The Concert pour Piano seul in five movements, composed in 1836 in Leipzig, dedicated to Ignaz Moscheles, who lived in London from 1821 as a pianist and conductor of the highest reputation. To this day, this ›Concert‹ does not exist in any integral edition. In the Henle-Verlag edition (1983) all the sentences appear, but you would have to put together the original version yourself. Florian Henschel's recording is the first to present this monumental document of a genius who stormed the sky. The sequence of movements alone makes it clear that Schumann is going his own way here: Allegro brillante – Scherzo primo. Vivacissimo - Scherzo. Intermezzo – Quasi Variazioni (an Andantino by Clara Wieck, with 6 variations by Schumann) – Prestissimo possibile.

2. Now in the same year, 1836, Schumann published a three-movement version in Vienna with Haslinger under the more provocative title Concert sans Orchester. This is the first published version, so formally considered authorized. The sequence of movements is now: Allegro brillante - Quasi Variazioni - Finale. Schumann omitted both Scherzi and Variations 2 and 5 of the first version. The latter are also absent from all subsequent printings of this set until 1983.

3. The sonata has survived to this day in another version that Schumann produced in 1853. The new publisher (J. Schuberth, Hamburg) asked for a scherzo, and Schumann inserted Scherzo II from the 1836 manuscript version. In doing so, he came closer to the existing views of the ›classical‹ four-movement scheme of sonata form, which, however, is difficult or impossible to derive from the compositional reality of the Viennese classical style. This remains the Vulgate version, which caught on in print and concert life - at the expense of the richness of Schumann's first invention. Johannes Brahms published the Scherzo I in 1866. Variations 2 and 5, which are missing in all editions, only became known through the Henle edition of 1983.

The character of the work as a whole is revealed most directly in the assault of the last movement: ›Prestissimo possibile‹, but that's not all, ›con anima‹ it goes on, ›vivacissimo‹, it says repeatedly ›più presto‹. Nevertheless, the finale takes up the fantastically stormy tone of the first movement and rounds it off. The two scherzi could not be more opposite: the first whizzing along bizarrely, with up to three superimposed rhythmic orders, the first of which already fools the player: It sounds like triple time, but its emphasis would fall after the notation in the upbeat. The second scherzo is built on a mazurka-like rhythm. The simple harmony of the variation theme invites you to play with virtuosity.

With the third version from 1853, Schumann himself gave up the extravagance of his ›Concert without Orchestra‹, which the reviewer Franz Liszt had mildly and ironically criticized, and with the title Grande Sonata he conformed to the genre convention. This did not promote the effect of the sonata. People took notice of her with more than hesitation: Clara Schumann had played the four-movement version for Brahms. He performed the three-movement Concert sans Orchester in the Wiener Musikverein in 1863, while Clara performed the unknown Scherzo I from the first version in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1866. Even in 1905, when a major auction house offered the autograph, no German library bothered to do so. The autograph (British Library) now bears the inscription: ›Purchased at L. Liepmannssohn's sale, Berlin, 27 May, 1905‹.

Today one is free to decide which version one allows to live on in both edition and concert. The 19th century developed the editorial ideology of the ›last-hand version‹, in this case it received additional weight with the certification by Clara Schumann. Since then, archivists and philologists alike have come to fear the apparent authority of widows tending estates—and regardless of this, it is a truism that an author who subjects his work to revisions does not always contribute to its improvement. The overwhelming richness of the first version of the Concert pour Piano seul was trimmed by Schumann himself. There is much to be said for helping her to get her right to live today. It's not a rediscovery, it's a rebirth as it is.

FANTASY PIECES OP. 12

Schumann wrote his Fantasy Pieces in the summer of 1837. He dedicated them to the twenty-year-old English pianist Robena Ann Laidlaw, whom he called (also in print) Anna Robena – he found that 'softer and more musical'. The fantasy pieces were printed in February 1838 by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig. In January, however, the important pianist Adolf Henselt had already performed the first piece, Des Abend, in Dresden. Today it is surprising that closed performances of the cycle were not common in the 19th century. Nowadays, a pianist is more conspicuous when he omits one or the other piece. But what is a cycle anyway?

There is no systematic or even historically satisfactory definition of 'cycle' for either music or poetry. According to popular belief, songs or poems form a cycle when there is a narrative connection between them that can be understood as a story. There is something like that in Schumann too, but seen as a whole his cycles are of infinite variety. They usually contain a center that identifies the title of the cycle in question.

These works by Schumann are often set on an imaginary stage. There, however, they do not perform any stories, rather they dance the round dance of the imagination. In the Davidsbündlertänze three figures - Florestan, Eusebius, Master Raro - appear in conversation. The carnival joke from Vienna also consists of dance scenes. The Carnaval lets figures of a masked ball appear. The children's scenes show people how they interact with one another. The forest scenes are not pictures, but also events in a romantic setting. Conversely, some of the titles in Schumann's work are purely linguistic borrowings from the painting. Blumenstück, as everyone would have thought of Schumann's Opus 18 at the time, is a still life of flowers, while Nachtstücke op. 23 would have been called oil paintings with the light of the moon by Caspar David Friedrich or Carl Gustav Carus.

Schumann determined the number and arrangement of the parts of the Fantasy Pieces cycle, also by not recording two pieces that had already been composed. One of these, Feurigst, was only published posthumously in 1858. Another, Leid ohne Ende, was included by Schumann in his album leaves (op. 1853) in 124: a single, expansive, peaceful melody in F major. The ego does not sing about suffering, but about its dream of peace. The compositions included in the cycle are designed in the same way: A lonely I sings about itself in the situation of its heart, but nothing visible is thought of in this cycle.

Of the evening (D flat major): The evening as the place of peace is age-specific. The singing I, i.e. the player, has no counterpart. Judging by the mere tonal lines, the piece would be in two voices, the notation results in new, additional voices – up to four, resulting in a very dense movement.

The morning upswing (F minor) is conveyed indirectly, as a kind of will and imagination. A delicate, quiet vocal line answers the powerfully dotted main theme.

Why?: in D flat major again, rhythmically suspended. A chord is reached over two seventh chords, the main accent of which lies on the third, so that the ending remains open.

Crickets: The ego of the piece wards off fantasies and whims in a rather rumbling dance, wandering in triple time between B flat minor and G flat major. The now obsolete word ›crickets‹ derives from the Greek ›gryllos‹ via Latin, it describes animal caricatures – here meaning gloomy, troubled thoughts.

In the night (F minor) opens the second volume of opus 12. Schumann wrote to Clara that it was too long for a performance, so he suggested Des Abends und Traumes Wirren. Schumann later added a reminiscence to the touching story of Hero and Leander, which was renewed by Schiller in the poem and later by Grillparzer in the drama – his comparison, however, applies solely to the nocturnal struggle of the swimmer with the waves, not to the death of the lovers.

Fable (C major) takes the form of a traditional ›song‹, just as Mendelssohn's songs are often built without words: a slow prelude that returns at the end to form a framework. The actual song forms the center, it flies by quickly.

Traumes confusion (F major): The meaning would be ›confusing dreams‹, but Schumann does not formulate and compose in such a material way. He shifts the accent even further, away from the unreal of the dream into its mere movements.

End of the song (F major): The playing instructions ›With good humor‹ do not mean ›funny‹. The change in meaning has narrowed the word. At that time, 'humor' still meant 'atmosphere' in general, one could also find oneself in 'bad humor'. Even educated music critics today may ask where the humor is in Schumann's Humoreske (op. 20), but the title says 'Expression of changeable moods'.

In this sense, the whole cycle ends in the most serious way, with a slow, quiet coda. The ideas that Schumann associated with it lie in deeper layers. He later took up these sounds, which are reminiscent of distant bells in the night, in a particularly meaningful song. What is meant is Auf das drinking glass of a deceased friend, No. 6 in the song series after Justinus Kerner op. 35, perhaps Schumann's most meaningful cycle. It comes from the ›song year‹ 1840.

The last verses read: "Silently the moon walks along the valley. / Seriously the midnight hour sounds. / The glass is empty! The sacred sound / Resounds in the crystal ground.« There is more to Schumann's music from such a sense of relationship than can be deciphered.

Hans-Joachim Kreutzer

Pianist 01/09