Portland Chamber Orchestra - Best Buddies - with music by Robert Schumann

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

A composer, critic and music journalist, Robert Schumann was one of the driving forces of the young Romantic Movement in Germany. Like many musicians of his era, Schumann did not seem destined to become a composer, let alone one who would be so influential in the development of a new style. He was the son of a bookseller, and had a love of music and literature. However, at his mother's insistence, he went to Leipzig to study law. While there he also studied piano with an ambitious teacher by the name of Friedrich Weick, whose daughter he would one day marry.

He soon convinced his family of the futility of further law study and turned his full attention to music. Physical problems with his hands prevented him from continuing as a pianist, and he turned to composition and criticism. In his own words...
"The singing voice is hardly sufficient in itself; it cannot carry the whole task of interpretation unaided. In addition to its overall expression, the finer shadings of the poem must be represented as well -- provided that the melody does not suffer in the process."

Schumann began work on the Piano Concerto in 1841, just after his long-anticipated marriage to Clara Wieck, and amidst sketches for all four of his symphonies. This was a remarkably prolific period for Schumann, reflecting his joyous union with Clara.

Until this concerto, however, Schumann had concentrated mainly on solo piano music, chamber works, and lieder. He confessed, "I realize I cannot write a concerto for a virtuoso, so I must think up something else…something between a symphony, a concerto and a large sonata…a self-contained movement." Schumann's musical anxiety owes much to the towering and awe-inspiring shadow of his virtuoso contemporary Franz Liszt. So the self-contained movement was transformed from "Phantasie" to "Allegro affetuoso" and then to "Concert Allegro, Op. 48." At last Schumann turned the work into a full concerto. By July of 1845 he had completed all three movements. Clara premiered the concerto in Dresden that December.

The whole work is exquisite, full of inventiveness, extraordinary lyricism, tenderness, and energy. The themes of the second and third movements are hewn from the opening theme of the first. Unlike a Lisztian piece, Schumann balances the piano and orchestra, giving them shared responsibility for conveying the themes-a style that would strongly affect later concerto composers. Pianistically, the concerto is much more a vehicle for lyricism than virtuosity. Liszt derided the work as "a concerto without piano." Sardonic remarks aside, the esteemed musicologist Donald Tovey summed up what everyone else hears: "…eminently beautiful from beginning to end, so free, spacious, and balanced in form, and so rich and varied in ideas."

Before illness clouded his judgment and ended his career prematurely, Robert Schumann commended the young Johannes Brahms as - to use his words - a "chosen one".