Schumann: Fantasie in C major, Op. 17

The pianist Alexis Weissenberg also died in 2012. He made his breakthrough in Salzburg during the Karajan era and is now represented in the Salzburg FESTIVAL DOCUMENTS with his solo recital of 1972. His evening began with Ravel’s 'Tombeau de Couperin', played transparently and with a highly flexible touch. Even the technically trickiest passages of Schumann’s C-major 'Fantasy' were embedded organically and convincingly into the musical flow of the work.

Mussorgsky’s 'Pictures at an Exhibition' could hardly be played more effectively or with more colour than in Weissenberg’s interpretation. This work ended the 'official' part of his recital, though there followed many surprising encores, which can all be heard on these two CDs (for the price of one) and thus round off this memento of the artist.

Previously released as a Prestige Edition product (4782280) in September 2010.

Schumann's music is descriptive and poetic. He was, after Wagner, surely the most important writer of musical commentary among the musicians of his time, while his piano cycles like Papillons, Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval, Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana couple personal feelings with poetic aspects.

For about ten years, up to op. 23, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano; it had been his instrument from the time of his youth, an affinity he shared with his later friend Frédéric Chopin, who was born in the same year as he was.

The opus numbers of the four works on this CD follow directly upon one another, having been written in the same short period (1838/39); in spite of their differences in form, length and content, they have much in common.

Eric Schneider has studied both the piano and conducting. He pursued a career as an accompanist and has worked with world renowned singers such as Christine Schäfer and Matthias Goerne. This is his first solo recording.

Sony Masterworks expands the catalogue of its Carnegie Hall Presents series with a set of previously unreleased recordings by legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, one of the most important performers of classical music in the twentieth century. The Sony Masterworks release of the three albums in The Private Collection makes these dazzling performances, previously held in the archives of Yale University as part of Horowitz’s papers, available to the public for the first time.

In 1988, a year before his death, Horowitz donated to Yale University a treasure trove of original recordings composed of Carnegie Hall concerts and performances he gave during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Horowitz had employed an engineer to make 78-rpm recordings of his Carnegie Hall concerts in this period, and he used them to review and judge his performances. Most of these mono recordings were originally contained on 12- and 16-inch acetate discs. They have been impeccably mastered, with the sound restored, from new transfers made in the Yale archives. Significant press accompanied the original announcement of the donation of these recordings to Yale, where Horowitz performed often through the years and was an assistant fellow of Silliman College.

Schumann said music is the language that allows one to commune with the other world. In 1834 this poet in sound, who had first thought about a literary career, founded a musical journal (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), writing its leading articles under various pseudonyms which encapsulated the contradictory aspects of his own nature and those of his imaginary collaborators in the Davidsbündler, David’s companions struggling against the artistic Philistines, hypocrites and impostors. An “opera without text”, according to Schumann, the Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of David’s Companions), published in 1838, are pieces of exceptional harmonic and rhythmic boldness.

Schumann was one of the first composers to examine the world of childhood. In 1848, in his Album for the Young, he gathered together a series of little pieces: joyful, picturesque or melancholy, invitations to dream or nostalgic looks back at the composer’s childhood.

Dedicated to Liszt, the Fantasie, Op.17 is one of the masterpieces of romantic piano music. Fiery, grandiose and febrile, this audacious, extremely virtuosic piece was intended by Schumann as an impassioned, heart-rending outburst addressed in 1836 to Clara Wieck, whom he only succeeded in marrying four years later after months of difficulties and suffering.