French Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known for his recordings of ultra-virtuoso music, starting with Liszt and going up from there to the likes of Alkan, Godowsky, and the iconoclast Leo Ornstein. As his career has developed, though, he has sought to avoid being stereotyped, offering some fine recordings of sonatas by Haydn and proceeding to the generally non-virtuosic Schumann. In this one, he programs Schumann's Waldszenen, Op. 82 (Forest Scenes), with Book I of Leos Janácek's On the Overgrown Path, its natural successor. Both works superimpose murky psychological threads on nature imagery, naturally much more explicitly in Janácek's case. This would seem to be anything but Hamelin's home ground, but he succeeds in setting a mood and keeping it going. His performances run almost completely counter to type: they are low-key, not fast, and in places almost impressionistic. With the Kinderszenen, Op. 15, as a sort of encore, the entire program has an impressively sustained intimacy and quiet allusiveness. Of course there is room for performances that do a bit more with the music, but it's clear that Hamelin is anything but a one-note pianist. Hyperion's engineers do much to make London's Henry Wood Hall sound smaller than it actually is.© TiVo

Admired by Prokofiev, Ravel and Rachmaninov, a supporter of Martha Argerich, teacher to Philippe Cassard, Nikita Magaloff considerably enriched the history of piano music as he made his way through the last century. A performer of Chopin first and foremost, we find him here two works by Robert Schumann, the rare Allegro in B Minor op. 8, taken from a vast and unfinished sonata from his youth, and the Waldszenen op. 82, a major cycle from the end of his life, with bedazzled musical reflections on his daily walks through the Rhenish countryside. Made in 1957 and 1959, these recordings have about them a tone of deepest confidence. Magaloff seems to be unveiling the most secret part of the German composer in this dawn-to-dusk walk in the woods. No country was ever friendlier (Freundliche Landschaft) nor a bird-prophet (Vogel als Prophet) more poetic. This is an adult's technique with the soul of a child. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Robert Schumann’s piano music is invariably bound up with the dramatic events of his life. Schumann channelled both his love for Clara and his pianistic frustrations into his music, which was often composed with Clara in mind, both romantically and musically; she was an outstanding pianist and composer in her own right. During the late 1830s Schumann wrote numerous works for the piano, many of which met with considerable success. The Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 dates from early 1839. In a letter of 15 August Schumann described the piece, which was dedicated to Frau Majorin Friederike Serre auf Maxen, as “delicate – for ladies”, and it is true that it has a gently lyrical, dreamy quality. Yet there is more to the Arabeske than this modest description would suggest. Schumann had left Leipzig for Vienna in the autumn of 1838 after reaching an impasse in his relations with the Wiecks, and the keenness with which he felt the separation from Clara may be sensed in the Arabeske’s mixture of wistfulness and determination. Of the piano music written by Schumann in the 1830s, just two collections include movement titles: the Phantasiestücke, Op. 12, and the Kinderszenen, Op. 15 of 1838. Schumann sketched 30 “cute little things” in early 1838, from which he chose 13 to create the Kinderszenen. The vivid movement titles were attached to each of the Kinderszenen after the music had been written, rather than inspiring the musical content. Yet the tender romanticism of these pieces – in Träumerei especially – suggests that Clara was never far from Schumann’s thoughts as he composed them. Although Clara was a powerful source of inspiration for Robert, he was also profoundly influenced by both musical and literary sources, which helped him to make sense of his rich inner world. E.T.A. Hoffmann enabled Schumann to explore the different facets of his nature through the character of Johannes Kreisler, who appeared in several volumes including Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke, one section of which is entitled ‘Kreisleriana’. Schumann strongly identified with Kapellmeister Kreisler: both men were devoted to the music of J.S. Bach, and both veered between extremities of mood, from ecstasy to despair. This multifaceted nature is encapsulated in the eight movements of Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Kreisler’s brusque mood-swings are represented through Schumann’s contrasts between dazzling virtuosity and lyrical tenderness, often anchored by the tonal contrast between the key areas of G minor and B-flat major. Schumann’s dual nature, previously communicated through Florestan and Eusebius, had found a new mouthpiece. In contrast with the first decade of his career, which was almost entirely given over to piano music, Schumann did not write a great deal of solo piano music in the 1840s, producing just a handful of fugues and pieces for children. At the end of 1848 he began the Waldszenen (‘Forest Scenes’), a set of nine short piano pieces. Vogel als Prophet is one of the more disturbing pieces in the set. Schumann had returned from Vienna to Leipzig in April 1839. He drafted his Drei Romanzen, Op. 28, by 11 December. Clara was so enamoured of the set that she insisted on being their dedicatee: “As your bride you absolutely have to dedicate something more to me; and I know of nothing more tender than these three Romances, especially the middle one, which is the most beautiful love duet”. © CAVI-Music

The music of Robert Schumann and the artistry of Sviatoslav Richter are a natural match. Schumann was loathe to use flashy, purely virtuosic elements in his compositions, a fact brilliantly illustrated in the vast majority of his works for solo piano. Rather, Schumann was much more likely to tell a story, paint a picture, or read a poem through his music, although his works were not overtly programmatic. Richter possessed a technique virtually unrivaled during his career and was able to definitively toss off even the most technically demanding works. At his heart, however, Richter was a poet and an artist with profound musical insights and introspections. This album, featuring recordings made in the late '50s, is one of Richter's surviving albums in which poor sound quality does not distract listeners from this artistry. His performances of the C major Fantasy, the Op. 82 Waldszenen, and the Op. 12 Fantasiestucke are magnificently refined, unhurried, and unsullied by some pianists' need to make the works flashier then they need to be. Schumann's works allow listeners to hear the warmer, more tender side of Richter in a way that not even his commanding performances of the Beethoven sonatas allow. Surprisingly spacious for a monaural recording, the restored sound quality throughout generally achieves a pleasing balance of warmth and clarity. © TiVo

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