SCHUMANN’S PIANO CHAMBER MUSIC/5 Presented by Liszt Academy

Similarly to numerous other masters of Romanticism, Schumann was also fond of fabulous and mysterious elements spun into music. There is a good example of this in the first half of the fifth concert in the Complete Works Live series, in which alongside Fairy Tale Pictures composed in 1851 there is a work, the 3rd violin-piano sonata (1853), containing a secret music code. Originally, the work prepared for József Joachim, perhaps the foremost violinist of his day, was the fruit of teamwork between Schumann, Brahms and Albert Dietrich. The piece is also known as the F-A-E sonata after its principal motif; the cryptic letters refer to Joachim’s ars poetica (Frei, aber einsam, that is, ‘Free, but solitary’).

Four years earlier, the horn soloist at the world premiere of Adagio and Allegro applauded the work in his diary thus: “The piece is splendid, fresh and passionate, just as I like it!” The 1842 Piano Quartet in E-flat major can be enjoyed by those who are close not only to the music of Schumann, but Beethoven and Mendelssohn as well: the influence of both masters is clearly evident in this richly stratified and inventive, albeit rarely performed, composition.