Schumann: Humoreske, Op. 20 (Grande Humoresque)

In his last Virgin Classics recital, a varied live programme from New York’s Carnegie Hall, Piotr Anderszewski included Faschingsschwank aus Wien by Schumann. On this new release, he focuses entirely on that quintessential German Romantic, whose 200th anniversary is celebrated in 2010.

“For me, Schumann is the great humanist,” says Piotr Anderszewski. “His purity and honesty touch me profoundly.” This new recital brings together three of the composer’s more rarely performed keyboard works, including the last piano music he completed.

“I fell back in love with Schumann a couple of years ago when I played the Humoreske,” explains Piotr Anderszewski. “For me, Schumann is the great humanist: there is more to his work and his life than music, and his purity and honesty touch me profoundly ... There is even greatness in the failures he experienced as a composer – with the orchestra and in matters of form … He doesn’t achieve the perfection of Chopin, Brahms or Mendelssohn.

“I see him as someone of extreme sensitivity, and also as someone with a bourgeois side to him and a strong sense of family. He was very methodical in his work, meticulous to the point of obsession, with a mad, poetic, idealistic streak that for me is very German. There is an almost religious depth in his work … Even if it can be frenetic and unbalanced, with its rhythmical asymmetry, its digressions, its sudden fortissimos, I still hear reminiscences of Lutheran choirs.

“There is such spontaneity, instability, whimsicality, even weirdness in his music. His writing is angular, as he propels you in one direction and then suddenly takes you the opposite way. His career as a pianist didn't work out, nor did his career as a conductor. He fails in certain compositions – and he even failed when he attempted suicide. There is a vulnerability about him and his music which touches me – and what a fascinating psychological case study he makes – but there is such beauty in what he did achieve.”

For this new recital, Anderszewski turns his attention to some of Schumann’s less frequently performed works. The Humoreske of 1839, far more serious-minded and substantial than its name might suggest, is built in five discrete sections. Mercurial in it shifts of mood, it reflects the composer’s report to his wife Clara that, while working on the piece, he was “laughing and crying, all at once”.

The Gesänge der Frühe date from 1853, the year before the composer’s attempted suicide, and form his last completed work for piano. Terse, introspective and harmonically adventurous they are expressive of the mood before sunrise.

By contrast, the Six Studies in Canon Form are lyrical and unobtrusively contrapuntal. Schumann composed them for the pedal piano which, like an organ, had an extra set of notes played with the feet; an example of the instrument is on display at Schumann’s birthplace in Zwickau. Anderszewski himself has adapted the pieces for the range of the modern piano and for ten fingers rather than two hands and two feet.

In response to Anderszewski’s Carnegie Hall recital, the Daily Telegraph praised “the intellectual power, profound emotional response and keen imagination that his playing conveys … Anderszewski’s remarkable ear for tonal shading and nuance is absorbingly to the fore … [His] command of perspective is paramount. The soft playing is mesmerising, the scope of his interpretation geared to probing deep into the music’s inner expressive tissues … Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien shows his romantic spirit and his instincts for drama and poetry. This is an outstanding release.”

In this CD, the fourth volume of the complete works for the piano and for chamber music with piano, Eric Le Sage takes four monuments of Schumann's solo piano repertoire: the Humoreske Op. 20 and the Klaviersonate Op.11 (CD1), the Albumblätter (topped up by three pieces from the Klavierstücke) and the Études in the form ofVariations Op.13 (CD2).The acoustic qualities of the Chauxde-Fonds Hall is caught in all its magic by Jean-Marc Laisné. This set firmly establishes Eric Le Sage and his Schumann project as a benchmark for Schumann interpreters.Vol.3 is Chamber Music Choice in the May issue of BBC Music Magazine.

Angela Hewitt’s recent Schumann performances in the concert hall were praised for their ‘urgency, jubilation and introspection’ and ‘power and finesse’. Now for the first time she has recorded two of his greatest piano works for Hyperion. Her clean, thoughtful, incisively musical playing which nevertheless allows a flow of passion to be released is perfectly suited to this music.

The fourth installment of the first true complete recording of Schumann’s piano works. No competition exists for this compilation anywhere and previous volumes have gained great support and reviews from the media and public alike. The entire production has been supervised by Schumann expert Joachim Draheim.

Spanish pianist, Maria Lluisa Cantos is a well known exponent of romantic music, in particular Spanish music, and has premiered works by Albeniz, Granados, Falla and Montsalvage. Here she performs a selection of her favourite works.

Robert Schumann’s Studien and Konzert-Etüden transform Paganini’s violin Caprices into stunningly virtuoso pieces for piano. Containing the hidden ‘voice’ of his beloved Clara, the Humoreske, Op. 20 is filled with contrasts Schumann expressed as “composing and writing and laughing and crying, all at the same time”. Ukrainian pianist Mariya Kim has gained global recognition through prizes including the Horowitz, Paderewski and China Shenzhen International Piano Competitions and the Seoul and José Iturbi International Music Competitions. Her achievements have also brought her a Yamaha Foundation Award.

Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in French. Emanuel Ax captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

In recognition of the bicentenaries of Chopin and Schumann in 2010 and in partnership with London’s Barbican, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, Ax has commissioned new works from composers John Adams, Peter Lieberson and Osvaldo Golijov. He has performed many works by contemporary composers, and his recordings of Haydn Sonatas received several Grammy awards.

The music dates from the late 1830s, when Robert Schumann was madly in love with Clara Wieck: ‘I have dreamed about you, I have thought about you with a love such as I have never experienced before… all this you will find beautifully depicted in my Op.20, the Grand Humoreske.’

Recording dates from 1981 and has been out of the catalogue for some time.

Booklet notes

This collection is now available again and at a budget price. Included are Schubert’s Piano Sonatas Nos 16 and 17, as well as Schumann’s 3 Novelletten Op.21, Fantasiestücke Op.12, Humoreske in B flat major Op.20. These recordings were made from 1956-1960.