Robert Schumann

Justinus Kerner, a poet and a practicing physician fascinated with occultism, somnambulism and magnetism, inspired young Schumann who, at just seventeen, set to music the singular poet’s verses. He would eventually come back to it in 1840 with a strange cycle, “a masterpiece of dereliction” (according to Brigitte François-Sappey) he wrote as an exorcism for his mental illness: through a suite of twelve poems (Zwölf Gedichte Op. 35, better known as “Kerner Lieder”), Schumann projects his own destiny, questioning himself, trying to understand why sadness overwhelms his soul even though he’s in-love and newlywed.This pain produced a series of masterpieces that are still admired for their musical and philosophical reach. Liederkreis Op. 24 also dates back to 1840, a surprisingly prolific year for Schumann who composed like a mad man; his first cycle of lieder based on poems by Heinrich Heine about love and its inevitable consequences: expectations, hope, disillusionment and farewells.The result of many years of collaboration between Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes, this album, recorded in Berlin in 2018, will undoubtedly be a landmark in Schumannian interpretation. The German baritone’s voice has grown deeper with age, giving a unique intensity rich with doubt and desolation, an impression reinforced by the strength and intensity of the Norwegian pianist’s performance. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Very different from Schubert’s Lieder, which are chants according to German “popular” tradition (usually strophic) with a musical accompaniment subservient to the singing (taking nothing away from their incredible genius!), Schumann’s are, to use Christian Gerhaher’s words, “lyrical dramaturgy”; miniature operas in which the piano and vocals are equal in content. This doesn’t explain why Schumann’s Lieder are so rarely performed in concert, with the exception of some well-worn cycles (normally Myrten, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und –leben). Gerhaher and his pianist Gerold Huber pick works from the genre’s ample repertoire that have almost never been performed in concert. Only three cycles date back to the “Liederyear” of 1840 (incidentally the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck), while the others are from the composer’s last years, beyond 1850, and are full of nostalgia… This is far from the dishevelled romanticism of his early years, the mood is dark and the discourse broken up into small brushstrokes. The contrast from one era to the other is striking. Gerhaher and Huber perform these surprising marvels brilliantly. © SM/Qobuz

Cellist Sol Gabetta and her almost-favourite pianist, Bertrand Chamayou, focus here on Schumann's all too rare repertoire for cello and piano. And once again, none of these pieces are intended a priori for cello, even though the original scores do propose the instrument as a possible alternative to the clarinet in Fantasy Pieces or the horn in Adagio and Allegro. It was only with Five Pieces in Folk Style that Schumann immediately thought of the cello! Here, Chamayou plays on a Viennese fortepiano by Streicher, dated from 1847 - three or four years after the composition of these three works. The Concerto for cello is accompanied by the Basel Chamber Orchestra, who also play on instruments from the romantic era, giving a more hushed yet incisive sound for the attacks. There’s more of an emphasis on the woodwind section as well, in contrast to the over-inflated string ensemble that so many modern orchestras offer up. © SM/Qobuz

Julian Prégardien decided to record the Dichterliebe cycle after he came across the new Bärenreiter edition; he went on to explore the work in concerts with his constant accompanist, Eric Le Sage, inserting other works by Robert and also by Clara Schumann, whose bicentenary is celebrated in 2019. When Clara played the Dichterliebe in the 1860s, she used to slip extracts from Kreisleriana between the songs. Prégardien asked Eric Le Sage to record the same extracts on a Blüthner piano of 1856, the year of Robert’s death, and also to include Romances composed by both Robert and Clara at a time when their future marriage was still uncertain. The sublime ballade Löwenbraut also forms part of the programme – a reminder of the young Robert’s anguish on Clara’s departure. At Julien’s suggestion, Sandrine Piau was invited to sing three duets: a simple Canon composed by Clara, and two duets by Robert, Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär, and the sublime In der Nacht. Four further songs complete the recording: Sängers Trost, a short piece in belcanto style; Kurzes Erwachen, composed by Robert at the age of just eighteen; Aus den hebräischen Gesängen, a very melancholy song; an extract from the cycle Myrthen (Robert’s wedding present to Clara); and Mein Wagen rollet langsam, a song that was included in the composer’s first version of Dichterliebe. The Dichterliebe songs micht have been expected to show Schumann triumphantly rejoicing in that year of 1840 when he was finally able to marry Clara; and yet they are characterised by bitter irony, nostalgic Sehnsucht, and a sense of dread… © Alpha Classics

French cellist Gautier Capuçon does not lack for charisma (or talent), and he has emerged as a major star. The Erato label seems to have tried to capitalize on that with the design of this album, featuring photos by the American Jamie Beck that cast Capuçon as a kind of Byronic figure. It may be a bit over the top, but classical music needs stars. The contents of the album, however, may not quite live up to the heroic concept. They consist of live performances recorded between 2009 and 2015, not of new material. Schumann wrote more music for cello than other composers did, and assembling them in a single program may have made sense. But the sound universes of the Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, and the various chamber pieces are entirely different. The major attraction here is the concerto, a work that has been revaluated upward in recent years as performers have clarified its knotty lines. Historically oriented performance works well with Schumann, and there is a historical reading by Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta with the Kammerorchester Basel. But Capuçon offers a fine modern-instrument option, and an important contributor to its success is octogenarian conductor Bernard Haitink, leading the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Sample the precise interplay between Capuçon and Haitink in the first movement, which makes the music seem to unfold inevitably. The concerto never drags, and Capuçon sounds gorgeous. The chamber works were recorded at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland with pianist Martha Argerich, and, in the case of the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88, Capuçon's brother Renaud on violin. Despite the august collaborators, these readings feature differing approaches from the principals and don't quite jell, either interpretively or sonically. Nevertheless, this is an album Capuçon's fans will want, and the reading of the concerto is an important addition to its growing discography.

Although he's alone on the cover, baritone Christian Gerhaher has given a lot of space over to soprano Camilla Tilling in his Schumann record. And so the original tones – and therefore the cycle's structure – are preserved. The voices mingle and their dialogue reminds us that these Lieder were presented to Clara like a wedding bouquet. The sound recording sometimes plunges both voice and piano into a maelstrom of noise. But happily, the performers offer an amorous reading of these poems borrowed from Goethe, or Rückert, or Burns. Both singers savour each consonant and give the poems a resounding, perfect pronunciation, and an unerring sense of diction (take Camilla Tilling's oh-so-sensual repetition of Kuß in Die Lotosblume, every bit as distracting as Margaret Price's), and of recital (the successive episodes of Hochländers Abschied take life in the hands of Christian Gerhaher, a virtuoso of nuance). With accompaniment from pianist Gerold Huber, they have created a very fine record that brings to life that marvellous poet of sound, Schumann. © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz

Looking at the program here, you may not have been aware that Robert Schumann contributed so many works to the cello repertory. He didn't; the two central works were originally written for other instruments and are presented here in versions for cello and piano. Nevertheless, there is no hint of the program being scraped together. This is because Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta has assembled a group of mostly late Schumann works (the Fantasy Pieces, Op. 73, might be called transitional) that aren't terribly common, probably have never been heard together before, and offer all kinds of insight into the late Schumann style that heavily influenced the young Brahms. The contrapuntally dense Konzertstück für Cello und Orchester, Op. 129, generally rendered as Cello concerto in English, was one such work; it's a thorny work that Schumann's contemporaries wouldn't touch, but Brahms would later write concertos that would similarly be accused of not favoring the soloist enough, but that continued to rethink the concerto form. The work gets a fine performance here, influenced by historical-instrument readings, from Gabetta and the Kammerorchester Basel under Gabetta's frequent collaborator Giovanni Antonini. Sample the first movement for an idea of the clarity they bring to Schumann's gnarly textures. Of course, another periodic aspect of the Brahms style was an interest in folk-like melodies, and here that's anticipated by a very rarely heard Schumann work, the Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102 (Five Pieces in Folk Style). This one is worth the price on its own; the five works move progressively away from folk models, and really the work is unlike anything else in the repertory. The two middle works are played well enough by the cello, and all in all this is a fine, even revelatory Schumann recital even if the cello concerto, recorded two years earlier than the other pieces, seems to inhabit a different sonic world.