Shop Now

Shop Now

Groove Back

Addressing the analysis of this full-bodied and elegant Divine Art box, which presents three SACD with piano works by Robert Schumann in the interpretation of the German pianist Burkard Schliessmann, I can only immediately agree with the Bavarian artist when he states that it is not so much the Schumann piano works, as the compositions for voice and piano that, in their combination of literature and music, contribute to the decisive understanding of this romantic composer and his power of thought regarding the association between poetry, illusion and reality.

On the other hand, Schumann is in music as Gérard de Nerval, Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis are in literature and poetry, as through their work, and also through their life, marked by dramatic and tragic implications, they have tried to replace logical thought, rationalism, with a new form of understanding of the surrounding reality. But there is another statement by Schliessmann, on the other hand, which I do not particularly agree with, when he writes in the rich and abundant notes accompanying the Divine Art box set, that “Anyone who listens carefully to Schumann’s music will recognize this illogical, irrational, almost insane aspect. However, we remain in the realm of common trivialities if we do not specify exactly how it manages to convey this impression to us. We can feel the effects of the methods he uses, maybe they will make a deep feeling resonate in us, but we can’t say we “understoom” them. Therefore, everything in Schumann’s work was “planned” at the highest level. Hence my personal conviction that Schumann was never “sick”, but was always misunderstood. […] Bettina von Arnim also considered Schumann healthy during a visit to Endenich, but the doctor who treated him was sick [as reported by Ernst Burger:Robert Schumann. Schott, Mainz 1999, p. 329]). Of course, an interesting testimony, but one that goes against the theses of those experts and those psychiatrists who instead confirmed, through as many documents and other testimonies, the presence of psychic disorders that finally exploded at the end of 1853 and that led to the suicide attempt by Schumann (among the various contributions, I mention only the particularly interesting one of the German neuropsychiatrist Uwe Henrik Peters, entitled Robert Schumann. 13 Tage bis ENDEnich, in the Italian translation Robert Schumann and the thirteen days before the asylum, published by Spirali, in which he points out how the cures, if we want to define them as such, of the time went to further worsen the fragile psyche of the romantic composer).

But what matters, at least there, is to understand and analyze the choice made by Schliessmann to bring water to his mill, starting from the choice of the piano pages spread in the playlist of the three SACD. In the first disc we find the Kreisleriana, Op. 16, the Fantasia in C major, Op. 17 and the Arabeske, Op. 18, while in the second SACD iFantasiestücke, Op. 12, again the Arabeske, Op. 18 and Des Abends, which is part of the first book of the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, already performed; finally, in the third disc we find iNachtstücke, Op. 23, the Dreistücke, Op. 111 and the Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133. As to say a choice that combines the alpha with the omega of Schumann piano production, in an attempt to provide a homogeneous key, in its progressive line, of the entire path for this instrument by the composer of Zwickau. An undoubtedly homogeneous key, dictated by the lucidity of Schumann’s thought and creativity, which Schliessmann carries on in the name of the fruitful relationship between literature and music undertaken by the brilliant romantic musician.

Not only that, but the Bavarian pianist, always in his accompanying notes, goes to touch and identify those points of contact between authors of romantic literature of Schumann’s time, namely Joseph von Eichendorff, E. T A. Hoffmann and Friedrich Hölderlin, as well as mentioning other “sacred” authors of the Germanic Romantic Pantheon such as Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, with the music of our author. This point of contact is not only about the importance of the choice of those poems then conveyed into the Lieder schumanniani, as happens in the Liederkreis Op. 39, whose twelve pieces deal precisely with as many poems by Eichendorff, but also with how the influence of this poet and other authors was decisive in Schumann’s exclusively piano music, that is, how the poetic word, the verse, the stanza, in the mind of the Zwickau composer, were perpetuated like “musicalized texts” on the piano keyboard. In a sense, through this operation of meta-semantic continuity, Schumann goes beyond Heine’s famous statement, namely that where words end, music begins. On the contrary, Schumannian intellectual and artistic “lucidity” allows him, according to Schliessmann, to unite the two concepts, those of speech and sound, in a continuous perpetuation, to the point of overturning Heine’s statement where the words end, there the music continues. Thus, through his musical reworking through the piano, Schumann does nothing but dilate, expand, exalt the poetic context, transforming it into a “sound metapoesy”. As if to say that, even when he composes music exclusively dedicated to his favorite instrument, Schumann does not stop thinking and imagining like a literate.

For this reason, in his introductory essay to the recordings contained in this box, Schliessmann writes verbatim: “Robert Schumann is considered the main representative of German Romanticism, in particular through his exemplary fusion/combination of literature and music. Where the spoken or written word reaches its limits, music enters with its language and its means. Poetry is elevated to a new level and stage of communication, representation and understanding. Stylistically, Schumann’s piano works belong to a transition period that was inspired by Bach’s polyphony and conditioned by the successors and imitators of Viennese classicism and in particular of Beethoven. The elements of Schumann’s style that make him original and great, and that are uniquely characteristic of him, can be seen in two ways. His compositional inventiveness took him far beyond the known harmonic progressions up to his time; on the other hand, he discovered a romantic principle in the fuges and canons of the previous composers. He saw the counterpoint, with its intertwining of voices, as corresponding to the mysterious relationships between external phenomena and human soul and, being a romantic composer, he found himself pushed to express them in complex musical terms».

I wanted to mention this long period in full, to better understand why the Bavarian pianist, in his choice of the repertoire engraved in these three SACDs, gave extreme importance to the Schumannian concept of Fantasie. This is because precisely in this piano genre, the Zwickau composer found the ideal expressive tool to synthesize the literary field with the exquisitely musical one (I remember that Schliessmann here performs the Fantasia in C major, Op. 17, the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 and the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 111), without forgetting, to further strengthen the “literary” dimension of his pianism, that behind the Kreisleriana op. 16 (whose eight pieces are as many Fantasies), as well as in the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, there is the cumbersome, almost omnipresent, figure of E. T A. Hoffmann And this applies above all to Op. 16, which Schumann composed in just four days in 1838 in a state of feverish restlessness and in the prey of a depressed mood, in which the musical matter collides, through precise harmonic-melodic and timbre choices, with the literary character of Hoffmann, namely the conductor Johannes Kreisler, who progressively plunges into madness, “anticipating in a disturbing way the destiny of Schumann, [and which] symbolizes the combination of biographical, literary and musical that is so characteristic of Romanticism and that we repeatedly encounter in the work of Schumann”.

Nevertheless, even the four Nachtstücke Op. 23, composed in Vienna in March 1839, are based on literary models taken from the narrative work of E. T A. Hoffmann and are connected by their gloomy atmosphere. It is interesting to note how Schumann noted in his diary that he was writing a “body fantasy” (sic!). Not only that, but shortly after composing the first of the four pieces, a real funeral march, Schumann learned of the death of his brother Eduard from Zwickau and commented verbatim: “How strange my premonitions are; I also realize the farewell to Eduard and how good he was still”.

The wonderful Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133 are the last work that Schumann himself prepared for the press and anticipate by very little what happened on February 24, 1854, that is, when he threw himself into the icy waters of the Rhine in an attempt to embrace death. The genetic fulcrum of this masterpiece is given by the poetry of Hölderlin and the figure of Diotima, so much so that the manuscript of the Gesänge der Frühe is entitled A Diotima, to which the Zwickau composer wanted to proxt his psychic dimension of that moment (the two gloomy final verses of the poem An Diotima (Your sun, the most beautiful time, has set/And in the icy night now fight hurricanes must have had a gloomy foremonitory meaning for Schumann), even if later in the printed version the dedication to Diotima was replaced in favor of the poet Bettina von Arnim, who was Then among the very few people who went to visit Schumann, exactly in May 1855, during his imprisonment in the mental health home in Endenich.

In one of his most famous novels, The Succombent, the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard makes the protagonist pronounce that Glenn Gould had been among the pianists of the twentieth century the “most lucid of the fools” and in a certain sense also the general approach of the reading made by Burkhard Schliessmann for his Schumann makes use of this expression. For the Bavarian pianist, performing the works of the Zwickau composer means giving a logical, clear, precise form to an expressive matter to say the least heart-steating in its unstable and humorous complexity. On the other hand, we must not forget how behind Schumann there is always the shadow of Bach, to whom the romantic musician turns incessantly to govern his passionate and desperate eloque. In the same way, Schliessmann addresses the performance of the Kreisleriana, in which the rhythmic sense, through an agogic application that often becomes convulsive, tends to discipline the sinking dimension of the whole composition, that “descending into the mute gurgo”, through the armor given by the squaring of the circle, because the form, even for the most romantic of romantics, cannot and must not be disregarded.

It is obvious that, with these premises, the interpretation of the Fantasy in C major for Schliessmann becomes the “programme manifesto” of his conception of Schumann. The “madness” at the service of a lucidity that goes to the point of actually anticipating the famous Wagnerian Tristan-Akkord marked by a suspended agreement at the end of the C major tonay that begins the first half Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen, even if the general arcata that the Bavarian artist packages throughout this page is equally distributed in the exaltation of the second and third half, long considered “weaker” than the harmonious overflow of the first half. Reflection and audacity, transport and shrinkage, breath that ends in hyperventilation, but always with a sound, an eminently elegant timbre, even “classic”, steeped in nobility, otherworldly detachment, as can be seen in the incipit of the second half.

The delicacy, the prudence, even a poorly concealed tenderness represent the DNA that Schliessmann confers on his reading of the Arabeske, and his slowing down on clouds of suspension make this page turn in the meanders of a dream world, as if the listener more than listening saw the progressive unrunraving of the sound material. Note how the Bavarian artist wanted to re-present in the second SACD another execution of the same Op. 18, offering an even more diaphanous, more intimate, more dreamy reading in its essence, as if to want to reiterate that Schumannian music incessantly tends to change, to change in its peculiarities because of its perennial humoral scent.

Through the interpretation of the Fantasiestücke Op. 12 Burkard Schliessmann penetrates the meanders of the fairy tale, in which the first of the eight pieces of the collection, Des Abends, represents the front door. And even in the most urgent moments, such as the Aufschwung, there is always a patina of obvious unreality in his pianoism, in which dreamlike, phantsmagoric, illusory scents feed the musical material. But this continuous call to irrationality, to the fantastic connotation are rendered by the Bavarian pianist through a perfectly dominated form, with clearly marked lines, thick enough to retain colors and shades. And the same goes for those songs, such as Grillen and the concluding Ende von Lied, in which the humorous brushstrokes are rendered with a childish (in the Schumannian sense of the term, of course) enthusiasm that makes itself palpable, hectic (and this thanks to a wise use of the pedalboard).

Between the eight Fantasiestücke of Op. 12 and the three of Op. 111 there are fourteen years apart but, from a certain point of view, the tempera, the genuine naivety and a youthful sedimentation nestled in the soul of their author present in both collections, do not make them warn in the least. And Schliessmann returns with due freshness, with that magical restlessness as we also nest in Op. 111, without forgetting a stamp that becomes vaporous in those moments of pause, of sudden reflection, as well as the inevitable temporal layer that, willy-nor-nain, settles in our lives.

The discipline of the gesture, its rigor then shine through in the Nachtstücke, in which the magisterio of the past, of the greats of the past (Bach on all) is highlighted with wisdom and participation, also thanks to a timbre dosage that is a lesson in style; this also involves the contrapuntal contribution, the polyphonic construction that snows perfectly in the arch (I think of the second passage, the Markiert undviv). Of course, apparently there would be to wonder what could be “nocturnal” in these four pieces, all in a major tonality, but in reality here Schumann (and in parallel Schliessmann) make us understand how the night hours for the poet, for the musician, for both, can be harbingers of “productivity”, of intellectual articulation, of creative fervor.

Obviously, the Bavarian pianist could not have concluded this excursus in Schumann’s “crazy lucidity” if not with the extraordinary Gesänge der Frühe, an exemplary essay of the last pianism of the genius of Zwickau, where modernity, the future of pianism are diluted in a classic rigor, so as to ideally “fit” the five pieces that make up the cycle, but that at the same time transform this pianistic masterpiece into a real interpretative puzzle because of its multiple harmonic facets that incessantly change the exhibition construct. And here Schliessmann is at least “Olympic”, capable of bridling, of untying the roughness and knots that under his fingers always come to the comb, decoding the changes with an agogy that is exquisitely elastic, flexible, changing. All this without sacrificing expressiveness, the cry of pain that rises mutely and to which Schumann entrusts his last heart break, before his absolute lucidity, the one that belongs only to the brilliant fools, hands him over to the pilly of Endenich.

From a technical point of view, the recording of these three SACDs represents a real undertaking, starting with the choice of the instrument, an extraordinary Steinway D-612236, alternately equipped with two keyboards, each with different sounds, sounds and intonations. One keyboard produced a bright and bright sound, while the other produced a warm and dark sound. Recording producer Julian Schwenkner, along with sound engineer Jupp Wegner, used cutting-edge technology, using fourteen microphones (including Coles 4038 and Royer R121 tape microphones, as well as legendary Neumann M49 valve microphones) to offer a Dolby Atmos experience made at Teldex Studios in Berlin. Thus, the technical setting and the equipment were fundamental to capture the complexities of Schumann’s compositions during the recording process. Those who have a quality listening system, will not be able to fail to appreciate the remarkable speed demonstrated by the dynamics but, at the same time, also the naturalness that it manages to release, until returning the most subdued nuances, as well as the difference in sound manifested by the alternating use of the two keyboards. The parameter of the sound stage manages to render the image of the instrument in the studio environment, not only lowering it in its amplitude, but making it clearly perceive the space that is around the piano, which, also because of the sophisticated microphone, turns out to be close, without compromising the irradiation of the sound, which correctly and beautifully fills the entire listening environment, therefore well beyond the presence of the speakers. The perfect microphone then went on to manage the way to say the least optimal the tonal balance, with the possibility of always discerning, including the passages in fff and ppp, the medium-acute and the low register, which in Schumann’s piano music is of fundamental importance, with absolute attention to the relative discounts. Finally, the detail, whose tactile element reaches truly audiophile levels, with a physical perception of the piano of great impact, so a three-dimensional dimension of the instrument is clearly felt, in addition to allowing a listening that never knows fatigue, a very important aspect this, if you take into account that overall we exceed two and a half hours of listening.