Schumann: Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133 [Excerpts]

By Erik Petersons on May 26, 2017.

...Schumann's late music seems to have emanated a dangerous glow. Perhaps it is not surprising that Clara, the most famous champion of her husband's works, suppressed or ignored almost all the late works, forever associated in her mind with his illness.

But surely, over the years, the lack of understanding of Schumann's later thoughts should have been corrected, as it has been with so many other composers (Beethoven included)? But no: instead of following the fascinating labyrinth of Schumann's musical development, too many commentators have dismissed all but the most popular works. Where Schumann's late music embarked upon experimental paths – including two major pieces of church music (almost severe in their archaic beauty), a set of piano pieces inspired by the dawn described by Christoph Eschenbach as "Mahler for the piano", uniquely personal concertos for cello and violin, a fascinating set of almost Wagnerian Choral Ballads based on German legends, and so on – many writers have made no attempt to understand them, but have bleated about loss of inspiration and a sad falling-off of mental powers. This, in turn, has meant that performers and concert promoters have shied away from programming works perceived as unpopular, just because they are unknown.

Schumann has, however, always had his passionate champions. Particularly for other composers, his music represents freedom, an unfettered creativity – stream of consciousness, even – that transcends schools and styles. While the composers of the 19th-century French, Czech, and Russian nationalist movements tended to reject Beethoven and to detest Brahms, they still loved Schumann. And in our times, there are many composers – Kurtág, Holloway, Holliger, Rihm to mention but a few – who have paid tribute to him in countless works. Oliver Knussen puts it well: "Schumann is quite merciless – just as you're getting over having your heart broken by some incredible bit of harmony, he does it to you again in the very next phrase."

Schumann's music is curiously alive today. One cannot pigeonhole him (perhaps that's why critics have difficulties); he is too experimental, too close to the edge of the known soundworld. Harmonically, rhythmically, emotionally he is way ahead of his time – outside of time, in fact, looking simultaneously into the past and the future.

—Steven Isserlis, In Defense of Schumann, 2010

This work was performed on the second concert of PCMS' Departure & Discovery Project at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.