Schumann: Papillons, Op. 2

Last year Matthias Kirschnereit won the ECHO Klassic. For Schumann’s anniversary year he has chosen works covering the composer’s entire career and pays special attention to Schumann’s short, fleeting miniatures. This CD includes the world-premiere recording of Ahnung which was only discovered in 2006.

The new "Liaisons" Series is a double-portrait series. It always combines two composers in order to explore more thoroughly their musical worlds, the way they inspired and were inspired by, as well as to find their common denominators and bring them closer to each other. Through a thorough analysis and a careful choice of composers and their compositions on each CD, the "Liaisons" - Series offers a bright spectrum of variety and challenges the listener with every release anew. Lazic, a composer as well: his arrangement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto for piano and orchestra will see its world premiere with Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano in October 2009.

Schumann was the quintessential Romantic: perhaps uniquely in his own time, certainly when the present works were written. Like most of his piano music, these pieces date from his early manhood, and all, in one way or another, exemplify his benign egotism and the fundamental generosity of his beleaguered spirit. More concerned with juxtaposing isolated ‘scenes’ than depicting cumulative plots, Schumann derived a unique form of drama from the interaction of contrasting characters. Carnaval (1835), like Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations, is a spectacularly wide-ranging portrait gallery, better regarded as a masked ball than a conventional set of variations. But it was not his first. That honour goes to Papillons (‘Butterflies’), composed four years earlier and modelled on the ball scene from the novel Flegeljahre by his literary idol, Jean Paul.

Composed between Papillons and Carnaval, the magnificent, highly virtuosic Toccata – woefully-often mistaken for a kind of super-Czerny – combines Classical and Baroque influences, both formally and texturally. Sadly, it coincided with, and indeed reflects, the loss to progressive paralysis between 1829 and 1833 of the third finger of Schumann’s right hand: virtually all of this extremely difficult piece can be played without the use of that very finger.

“This recital, given at the Studio Ansermet in Geneva, brings together the three composers who are, to my mind, most representative of the Romantic image of piano music and the most innovative. Members of the same generation 1810, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt succeeded in transcending the art of the piano by their inspired and eminently subjective musical visions.

One thing is certain: this highly moving Romantic generation represented by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt held the secret of making us dream with our heart.”

Romain Hervé

Katia Bronska is Polish by birth, Parisian by adoption. Acclaimed by the critics, she has captivated audiences around the world, meeting with success and triumph in great cities such as Paris, New York and London.

Her music shows a fascinating personality. She has caught the attention of great musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin, who wrote: "I have just heard Katia Bronska and I am thrilled! She plays Chopin's works with a precise and intrinsic rubato, with a tempo that leads you from one enchanting moment to the next." She was an exceptionally gifted child, who received the gold medal in Poland's National Piano Competition for Promising Young Talent at the age 12. She studied with the great piano teachers Krystyna Jastrzebska and Zbigniew Sliwinski, before going to work with some of the most distinguished professors in St Petersburg. She was awarded the Grand Prix of the Fondation de France (Prix Charles Oulmont) in 1987. Katia Bronska likes to perform in intimate communion with places and people. In her concerts she has her captivated listeners in raptures of emotion.