Schumann – Page 5 – The Listeners' Club

Happy Birthday, Robert Schumann

November 27, 2020June 8, 2018 by Timothy Judd

Today marks the 208th anniversary of the birth of Robert Schumann (1810-1856). On Monday, we considered the relationship between Anton Webern’s youthful 1907 Piano Quintet and the music of Brahms. Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, completed during the summer of 1864, was greatly influenced by Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44. With this work, written in 1842 during his “year of chamber music,” Schumann practically invented the heroic and often symphonic pairing of string quartet and piano. Notice how …

The 2017 Classical Grammys

November 27, 2020February 17, 2017 by Timothy Judd

Here is an overview of last weekend’s 2017 Grammy Awards in the classical categories. From opera to chamber music, the list features a heavy dose of American contemporary music: Best Orchestral Performance Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow – Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 & 9 Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra) This is the second installment in a series of live-concert Shostakovich recordings by Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony on the …

Remembering Sir Neville Marriner

July 31, 2017October 3, 2016 by Timothy Judd

Every great conductor started out as an accomplished instrumentalist. Look at the biography of Sir Neville Marriner, who passed away yesterday at the age of 92, and you’ll be reminded of this truism. In the 1950s, Marriner performed as a violinist in two celebrated orchestras: the Philharmonia and the London Symphony. For 13 years, he served as second violinist of the Martin String Quartet. He first picked up a baton around age 40. …

Schumann’s Musical Descent into Insanity

November 27, 2020April 22, 2016 by Timothy Judd

On Monday, we listened to Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 “Spring,” a sunny piece written in the “springtime” of Schumann’s life, shortly after his marriage to Clara. Now let’s hear a different, darker side of Schumann: two strange, haunting works from the final years of the composer’s life, written as he descended into insanity. It’s now believed that Schumann suffered from tertiary syphilis, a disease which appeared gradually over time and produced a host of …

Schumann’s First Symphony: Spring Blooms Forth

November 27, 2020April 18, 2016 by Timothy Judd

It begins with a majestic trumpet and horn fanfare…a triumphant invocation of spring, inspired by these lines from a poem by Adolf Böttger: O wende, wende deinen Lauf— Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf! O turn, O turn and change your course— In the valley spring blooms forth! It’s hard to imagine a piece more infused with the spirit of spring than Robert Schumann’s First Symphony. Schumann had just married Clara, a renowned …

Schumann and Tchaikovsky: The Music of Manfred

November 27, 2020February 3, 2016 by Timothy Judd

"Manfred On The Jungfrau," watercolor by John Martin (1837)

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains.—Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn’d the language of another world. -Lord Byron, Manfred Demons inhabit Lord Byron’s Manfred. In the 1,336-line dramatic poem, Manfred is tormented by guilt surrounding a mysterious past transgression …

The Mercurial Romanticism of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 73

November 27, 2020October 2, 2015 by Timothy Judd

Listening to Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 forces us to live in and enjoy the moment. The three short “Fantasy Pieces,” written in just over two days in February, 1849, are filled with abrupt, slightly schizophrenic, changes in mood. Moments of deep introspection, followed by bursts of euphoria, remind us of Florestan and Eusebius, the split personalities which inhabit much of Schumann’s music. In the Fantasy Pieces, each delightful and unexpected harmonic shift whisks …