robert schumann carnaval, op. 9; fantasie, op. 17 · 2017. 10. 23. · mysterious and kaleidoscopic...
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ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9 Fantasie, Op. 17
Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano
Robert Schumann, the “herald of a new poetic age”, in the words of his biographer, John
Daverio, carved out a unique position for himself in the world of German Romanticism,
especially in the creation of a new genre of solo piano music, which consisted of a cycle
of miniatures, often provided with evocatively poetic titles. The present recording
features Schumanns three-movement Fantasie in C major. Op. 17 and the playfully
mysterious and kaleidoscopic Carnaval, Op. 9, a series of miniature character portraits
with a wide range of moods and textures. Chi-Chen Wu performs these works on a copy
ofal9th-century Viennese fortepiano by Rodney J. Regier.
ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9 Fantasie, Op. 17
[T]-[l] Fantasie in C major, Op. 17
0-[li Carnaval, Op. 9
Total Time: 62’22
Chi-Chen Wv, fortepiano (Rodney J. Regier Freeport, Maine)
8 07052 0
ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9
Fantasie, Op. 17
Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano
%
The Romantics"^
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Carnaval, Op. 9
Fantasie, Op. 17
Chi-Chen Wv,fortepiano
(Rodney J. Regier Freeport, Maine)
2
Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) Total Time: 62’22 Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 ^ \J] Durchausphantastisch und leidenschafilich vorzutragen.12'57
\J} Mdssig. Durchaus energisch.730
[1] Langsam getragen. Durchaus leise zu halten. 10^49
Carnaval, Op. 9 0 No. 1. Preambule.223
0 No. 2. Pierrot.220
0 No. 3. Arlequin.1V7
0 No. 4. Valse noble.2'06
0 No. 5. Eusebius.2V2
0 No. 6. Florestan.039
^ No. 7. Coquette..140
0 No. 8. Replique^ Sphinxes.033
^ No. 9. Papillons.031
0 No. 10. A.S.C.H. - S.C.H.A.: Lettres dansantes.r06
0 No. 11. Chiarina.124
0 No. 12. Chopin.123
0 No. 13. Estrella.031
0 No. 14. Reconnaissance.142
0 No. 15. Pantalon et Colombine.IV1
0 No. 16. Valse allemande-Paganini...221
S No. 17.Aveu.049
0 No. 18. Promenade..222
0 No. 19. Pause.049
0 No. 20. Marche des Davidsbiindler contre les Philistins.3 42
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Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano
I raised by World Journal, Chicago for her “amazing
"playing”, “symphonic, expansive texture of breathless
virtuosity” (Historical Keyboard Society), and her
Schumann performance, in which “the music comes to life in
a new way” (Early Music America), pianist Chi-Chen Wu
has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto
soloist in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain,
Japan, Taiwan, China, the Aspen Music Festival, Monadnock
Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Concert
Series among others. Her concerts have been broadcast
on NPRs Simply Grand Concert Series and NPR - From
^.^.W The Top in Boston. Musicians and conductors with
whom she has concertized include Karl-Heinz Steffens, Jonathan McPhee, Zuill Bailey,
members of the Julliard String Quartet, Takacs String Quartet, musicians from the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and members of the Boston Symphony as well as
New York Philharmonic orchestras.
A native of Taiwan and prize winner of several Taiwanese national piano competitions,
Wu came to the United States for graduate study and received two masters degrees, piano
performance and collaborative piano, and a doctorate from New England Conservatory
(NEC), where her teachers included Jacob Maxin, Irma Vallecillo, John Moriarty,
Kayo Iwama, and John Greer. She has also worked with Thomas Quasthoff, Martin Katz,
Kim BCashkashian, Lawrence Lesser, and Gabriel Chodos. Upon her graduation from NEC
with Distinction in Performance and Academic Honors, she was appointed Assistant
Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In addition to her teaching duties
at NTNU, she also served as coordinator of collaborative piano study and developed the
graduate programs curriculum. In 2007, Dr. Wu accepted a position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, where she
taught piano, studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, and conducted research on historical
performance practice with Neal Zaslaw. Continuing with her research interests,
in the summer of 2011 she presented a research paper on Schumanns
metronome markings at World Piano Conference in Serbia. This paper received
“Diploma of Excellence” from the World Piano Teachers Association, the
highest accolade of this organization. As a recording artist, Chi-Chen s Musica Omnia album of the complete
Schumann sonatas for piano and violin (MO 0611) won two Gold Medals from
the Global Music Awards and was named in the Top 10 “Best Classical Recordings of 2015” on The Big City, New York which included the New York Philharmonic. She has recorded Haydn Lieder on a replica of Walter fortepiano with soprano Andrea Folan for Musica Omnia. Her recital and discussion on piano collaboration are featured on the DVD
“Performing the Score” released in 2011. Dr. Wu is piano professor and coordinator of collaborative piano at the University of
Wyoming. Her students have been prizewinners in numerous competitions, including the northwest division of the MTNA competition, and have been accepted to prestigious schools
such as the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, McGill University, and Conservatoire de Paris for graduate study. During the summer, she teaches at the Killington Festival in Vermont.
Dr. Wu is currently President of the Wyoming Music Teachers Association and is represented by
Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, www.ccwpiano.com
Robert Schumann: Pianist, Composer and Writer
Robert Schumann, like Handel and Telemann before him studied law at university, but abandoned his degree in order to become both a poet and a musician. His life up to the
age of 20, when he began piano studies in Leipzig with Friedrich Wieck, later to become his bitter antagonist and father-in-law, was that of a literary buff; he was uncommonly well read
in a wide range of German literature. He became the first truly idiomatic musical critic as well as an exceptional composer of Lieder, due to his lifelong interest in the written word. Matriculating
at Leipzig University as a law student in 1828 he (as he wrote to his mother) intended to settle in Heidelberg, both to further his legal studies and to expand his “intellectual circle”. The initial
plan was for him to return to Leipzig by Easter of 1830.
En route to Heidelberg in May 1829 he was overcome by an “extraordinary desire” to play
the piano. While passing through Frankfurt: .. .on May 14 he strolled into a piano dealers shop, introduced himself as the valet of an
English nobleman interested in purchasing an instrument, installed himself at a piano
and played to his heart s content for three hours. Although he promised to return in two
days with a definitive answer from his master, he was, by that time, as he proudly related
the anecdote to his mother, already in Riidesheim drinking Riidesheimer beer.”
{John Daverio: Robert Schumann Herald of a New Poetic Age, 1997)
Schumanns time in Heidelberg seems to have been devoted to most everything but pursuit
of his legal studies. Though enrolled in several courses in constitutional and international law he
appears to have avoided attending the lectures, instead immersing himself in the study of various
languages including French, Italian, English and (according to one source) Spanish. After
matriculating in Heidelberg he set off on a two-month tour of Switzerland and Italy, where he
was first enchanted and later (as he wrote in his diaries) bored by the operas of Rossini.
Schumanns literary background uniquely equipped him to note down his observations
about a host of subjects. As he increasingly embraced music as a career path, his writing skills
made him one of the most eloquent and innovative writers on the subject, enabling him to
produce music criticism to a level that few others have attained. Parallel to cultivating his writing
skills, he pursued piano performance with gusto, with another player friend, August Bohner,
exploring the four-hand repertory of his latest musical god, Franz Schubert, whose death in 1828
caused the eighteen-year-old Schumann to spend an entire night in weeping (as he wrote at the
time). The strongest literary influence on Schumann, who knew the works of Goethe and Schiller
intimately was the ironic German novelist and humorist, Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich
Richter 1763 - 1825), whose works were characterized by sudden contrasts and interrupted
episodes - he was both admired and ridiculed for endless digressions within his narratives and the
deliberate frustration of expectation, characteristics which Schumann adopted for certain of his
works, especially the cycles of miniatures for solo piano. In these works the movements often end
inconclusively or cut suddenly from one to the next, an effect that many of the first listeners to
these works found disconcerting. (Schumann himself, aware of the radical nature of his music,
advised listening to the Papillons cycle more than once before judging its effect).
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Though for a time (several times, really), Schumann entertained the idea of studying
with Mozarts longer-lived rival, J. N. Hummel, he finally opted to submit to Wiecks regimen
in Leipzig which its author promised would, within three years, turn Schumann into a
greater pianist than either Hummel or that other famous and much-esteemed virtuoso,
Ignaz Moscheles. All this time Schumann continued his exploration of the works of
Schubert, especially the later ones,
including the majestic and profound String
Quintet in C major, D. 956, which he
personally recommended to Wieck as a
must-study piece. Around this time
Schumann had his first encounter with the
violin virtuosity of Nicolo Paganini, which
both delighted and disturbed him, and
turned him to writing some variations on
the Caprices, and paying homage to the
Italian in his Camaval, Op. 9. By 1829 -
1830 Schumann was honing his pianistic
skills in earnest and also composing for
the medium, his first efforts consisting of
a virtuosic Toccata in C major (completed
by 1832, published two years later), which
expressed his revolutionary pianism in
recognizably Baroque forms, putting his
study of the works of Handel and Bach to
good use. Music had clearly triumphed
over the law, as Schumann wrote to his
mother in July 1830, describing his
“twenty-year struggle” between poetry and
prose, or music and law.
Fortepiano by Rodney J. Regier
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Schumann: Fantasie in C major, Op. 17:
Schumanns Fantasie, Op. 17 dates from 1836, with its first version drafted out by June
of that year. According to research by Nicholas Marston (quoted by Schumann
scholar, the late John Daverio), it was originally created by Schumann as a response to
unhappiness over his temporary parting from Clara, during the “summer of despair”, which
occurred during that year, when Schumann was forbidden by Friedrich Wieck to have any
contact with his daughter. The Fantasie, as he wrote to Clara two years later embodied the
passionate outpouring of his longing for her and his pain at their enforced separation, (during
which he attempted to forget Clara in the company of other women and alcohol). Having
penned the first movement, originally titled “Ruins: Fantasia for the Pianoforte”, Schumann,
by early September had been partially distracted from his loss of Clara by an invitation to
contribute towards the cost of erecting a monument to Beethoven in his home town of Bonn,
that initiative spearheaded by, among others, Franz Liszt.
In a letter to the publisher Friedrich Kistner, Schumann explained: “Florestan &
Eusebius [Schumanns poetic alter-egos] would very much like to do something for
Beethovens Monument and have written something to that end with the title ‘Ruinen,
Trophaeen, Palmen. Crosse Sonate f d. Pianof Fiir Beethovens Denkmal’”. The idea was to
publish his work and to donate a portion of the proceeds towards the cost of the monument.
Although Schumann then turned to a Sonata in F minor (now lost), the Fantasie was
far from done with. After its initial rejection for publication, Schumann took the opportunity
(in early 1838) to revise the work thoroughly, finally having it accepted for printing by
April of that year, over three years after his initial “lament” for Clara had been penned.
In his biography of Schumann, “Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age”’, John Daverio details the
vicissitudes surrounding the completion and naming of this singularly personal work, which
at one time or another bore titles such as: Phantasien, Fata Morgana (after a sorceress of
Sicilian legend), and Dichtungen: Ruinen, Siegesbogen, Sternbild (Poems on ruins, triumphal
arches and constellations). In his search for a suitable title, Schumann acknowledged that
T;
the work occupied somewhat nebulous terrain between
“Sonata” and “Fantasie”, his use of the word “ruins” as
much an acknowledgement of his debt to classical
(i.e. sonata) forms as it was a reference to his ruined
“summer of sadness”. By 1839 the work had shed its
poetic titles, but retained a dedication to Franz Liszt,
instigator of the Beethoven monument to which
Schumann had sought, with this expanded and passion¬
ately virtuosic work, to contribute.
The two sides of Schumanns artistic persona,
Florestan and Eusebius (personifying, in turn, impetuosity
and introspection) seem to inhabit this work jointly,
Florestan taking the honours in the second movement
and Eusebius owning the almost-prayerftil finale. The
opening movement (subtitled “fantastic and passionate
throughout”) finds the two alter-egos in an equal and
balanced contest. In a letter to Clara, Schumann
referred directly to the one literary reference remaining
in the work, from Friedrich Schlegel’s Die Gebiische'.
“Through all the tones in this colourful earthly dream, a quietly drawn-out tone
sounds for one who listens furtively.” Schumann posed her the question: “Aren’t you the
tone in the motto? I believe so.” Schumann’s original homage to Beethoven survives in a
musical reference to the final number in the composer’s song cycle An die feme Geliebte,
which appears in a coda at the conclusion of the first movement.
Schumann in Leipzig, 1830 By October 20 Schumann was installed in the Wieck home in Leipzig where, as he later
wrote, he devoted at least six to seven hours daily to piano practice. Within the year he
had become disenchanted by Wiecks method of teaching and, at least for a time, flirted
with the notion of departing for Vienna to study with Moscheles for a year or so. He also revisited
the idea of apprenticing himself to Hummel, in part because of Hummel’s broad range of
activities as Kapellmeister, pedagogue, performer and composer. Naturally Wieck took offense at
the suggestion, and relations between him and Schumann were strained for a time, though
temporarily mended, but clearly on the way towards the bitter recriminations between the two
over Schumanns later desire to court and later marry Wieck’s daughter, Clara, now just 11 years
old, 9 years Schumanns junior and her father’s star pupil.
Also by 1831 Schumann was taking lessons in composition - the only ones he would ever
take - from Heinrich Dorn, a conductor and composer of vocal music, both lieder and opera.
His enthusiasm for the rigors of counterpoint found favor with the young Schumann and
resonated with his study of the Baroque masters Handel and Bach. Schumann gradually
acclimated to Dorn’s austere and stiff personality, and similarly began to absorb the rigorous art
of counterpoint. This phase was short lived, for by 1832 Schumann had ceased studies with Dorn
and become more absorbed in creating his own compositions, which included re-workings of
Paganini’s Caprices (which he called Intermezzi). His never-ending exploration of literature led
him to discover the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, opening up what he described as “new worlds”
for his investigation. As was the case with Jean-Paul, Schumann found Hoffman’s writing both
stimulating and disturbing, especially his exploration of the divided self, a concept with which
Schumann already identified strongly. By 1 July, 1831 we find Schumann’s first reference to the
characters Florestan and Eusebius, whom he characterized as his “best friends”, both of whom
were actually poetic projections of opposing personalities which he recognized in himself:
Eusebius, the reflective and scholarly dreamer and Florestan (the name perhaps following
Beethoven’s operatic hero), the man of purpose and action.
10.-5
That same year Schumann encountered for the first time one of his exact contemporary
musical idols in the person of Fryderyk Chopin. On 7 December, 1831 in an ecstatic review in
the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung of his Variations on Mozart’s La ci darem la mano, published
in 1827 as opus 2, for piano and orchestra, Schumann acknowledged the Polish pianist with
the memorably enduring phrase “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”, not only establishing
Chopin’s reputation in print, but also his own as a music reviewer of uncommon eloquence
and perceptiveness. While he was acknowledging Chopin’s position in the musical pantheon,
Schumann noticed for the first time a problem with the middle finger of his right hand,
which was ultimately was to deprive him of the pursuit of his intended career as piano
virtuoso and push him towards pursuing composition full time. It began with a numbness in
that finger and may have been exacerbated by Schumann’s attempts to strengthen it with
a rather disturbing device called a chiroplast, a contraption that was recommended by several
pianists, including the well-known pedagogue, Frederic Kalkbrenner, but vehemently opposed
by Friedrich Wieck. In any case, by the end of 1832 Schumann was resigned to the condition
and referred to his right hand as “lame”.
Carnaval, Op. 9: In tht winter of 1835 Schumann completed two major works for solo piano, his
Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 and the strange and mercurial Camaval, Op. 9. Both of these
works were linked to Schumanns infatuation with Ernestine von Fricken, whose
acquaintance he made first in 1834, and in whom he was, for a time, romantically interested.
As the works tide suggests, Camavalwzs completed in early 1835, in time for the carnival
season that precedes Lent. The work is populated by various fantastic characters from
Schumanns imagination, re-positioned in a dream-scape that is in equal parts representative of
the commedia deW arte and the David band of Schumanns idealistic inner world, continuing
their eternal fight against the “Philistine” enemies of art. As John Daverio describes it:
''Carnaval (its title, by Schumanns own account, a reflection of the works completion
around carnival season) beautifully demonstrates the process whereby a biographical subject is
transformed into an aesthetic counterpart. As Schumann explained it in a letter to [Ignaz]
Moscheles of 22 September 1837, most of the compositions twenty-one movements are based
on the pitch equivalents of the letters “ASCH” the name of the village from which his “musical
girlfriend” hailed, and also the only “musical” letters in Schumanns own name. The letters
yield three configurations of pitches, or “Sphinxes”, as Schumann calls them, each laid out
in long notes between the eighth and ninth pieces, Replique and Papillons, of the finished set:
(l)SCHA = Eb (the German pitch equivalent of S) C B (the German equivalent of H) A;
(2)AsCH=AbCB; and (3) A S C H = A Eb C B. Interestingly enough, the first Sphinx,
derived from a reshuffling of the letters into the order in which they appear in Schumanns
name, is not employed as generative material for any of the pieces in Carnaval. Schumann thus
casts himself as an unseen presence, a master puppeteer regulating the motions of his creations
from behind the scenes.” The works original title read “Faschung - Schwanke auf vier Noten fiir Pianoforte von
Florestan”, (“Carnival pranks based on four notes for piano, by Florestan”), later dropped by
Schumann at the request of the publisher. The twenty movements are imbued with
fantastic and mercurial elements, their cast of characters appearing and vanishing in a dream¬
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like and impressionistic fashion. In any case, the (unnamed) reviewer for the Hamburger
musikalische Zeitung on 11 October, 1837 was perplexed: a pot-pourri, he called it, but in no
way a work of art. The cast includes love-interests Ernestine and Clara, composer-colleagues
Chopin and Paganini, as well as characters from Schumanns own literary fantasy concealed
as figures from the commedia deW arte, such as Arlequin, Pierrot, Pantelone and Columbine.
There are reminiscences of Schumanns own works {Papillons, Op. 2 in no. 6, Florestan, for
example). The dream-like quality of the little vignettes is underlined both by their brevity
and also the frequent, sudden interruptions between one idea and the next. Schumann
himself complained that critics often failed to understand the wit and humour that under¬
pinned many of his works, seeking “grace and charm” instead. Schumanns use of the term
“Witz” (wit), a term familiar also to Schumanns literary guru, Jean Paul, specifically meant
the ability to find a relationship between apparently disparate elements, and to place them in
juxtaposition in a way that reveals their similarities, and, thus, makes sense, generating artistic
coherence and unity. In Carnaval, it is Schumanns use of his fragmentary musical-letter
“Sphinxes” that provides a coherent underpinning for the work as a whole. As an ultimate
gesture of integration, the final “March of the Band of David against the Philistines” binds
the work together, with its echoes of the opening movement (and a further quotation
from Papillons, Op. 2). -Peter Watchom, Cambridge, MA, April, 2017
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