Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Adagio and Allegro for Cello and Piano, Opus 70
Robert SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, Germany

In the winter of 1849 Schumann became interested in the French horn. The recent invention of the valved horn gave the once-awkward natural horn much greater range, flexibility, and expressive power, and–working at white heat–Schumann set out to exploit the possibilities he recognized in the new instrument. He composed the Adagio and Allegro for horn and piano in four days (February 14-17, 1849) and then over the next three days sketched out the Concert Piece for Four Horns and Orchestra.

Schumann specified that the Adagio and Allegro could be performed by other instruments, specifically the cello or the violin. More recently, it has been arranged for oboe and for viola, and in addition the piano part has been orchestrated, transforming the Adagio and Allegro into a miniature concerto.

The Adagio and Allegro has become one of Schumann’s most popular chamber works. The dark opening section (Schumann marks it “Slow, with inward expression” and stresses that it should be played very legato) is suffused with a melancholy cast, but this vanishes at the second section, marked “Fast and fiery.” The Allegro bursts to life here in a flurry of triplets, and this music demands athletic playing through a very wide range. A quiet interlude provides some relief before the exciting rush to the close. Schumann’s wife Clara was delighted by this music, and–after playing it through with a horn player–she is said to have exclaimed: “A magnificent piece, fresh and passionate; just what I like.”

Dichterliebe, Opus 48

Robert Schumann fell in love with Clara Wieck while she was still in her early teens, but the course of true love did not run smooth. Her repressive and controlling father was violently opposed to Schumann and did everything possible to block the match. It took a long series of court actions to escape his grasp, and the couple was not free to marry until 1840, when Clara was 21. Before that, Schumann had composed almost exclusively for the piano, but now–with the prospect of marital happiness before him–Schumann began to write for voice: 1840 was the famous “year of song,” during which he composed over 130 songs. The couple was not married until September, but they spent several happy weeks together in Berlin that spring, and in the aftermath of that union Schumann produced two song cycles: Liederkreis, Opus 39 and Dichterliebe, Opus 48; the latter was composed very quickly, between May 24 and June 1.

Dichterliebe (“Poet’s Love”) is a true cycle: it sets the work of one poet, concerns itself with one subject, and offers a progression of ideas across the span of the songs. For his texts, Schumann turned to the German poet Heinrich Heine, whose mixture of sentimental romanticism and irony particularly appealed to him. From Heine’s Buch des Lieder (Book of Songs, published in 1827), Schumann chose sixteen brief poems about love. There is a clear progression across the cycle: the texts are first about giddy love, then give way to doubts and the decay of love, go on to pain and sorrow, and finally to despair and images of death.

So troubling a progression is remarkable from one on the verge of marriage, and in his book on Schumann’s songs Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau asks a penetrating question: was Schumann in love with Clara–or with the idea of being in love with Clara? The singer notes that when things were looking bleakest for the young couple, Schumann could produce his most heartfelt love songs; when marriage actually seemed imminent, Schumann could be externally happy but wrote songs full of fear and worry. Perhaps this is the reason Heine’s love lyrics–with their sharp mixture of feelings–spoke directly to the composer.

Schumann’s settings of Heine’s poems are quite concise: the sixteen songs take only twenty-six minutes. The progression is easy to follow: Dichterliebeopens with the bursting buds of May and concludes with a burial scene. Along the way, listeners can savor such particular pleasures as the ecstasy of Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne; the intensity of Ich will meine Seele tauchen, which seems almost without melody; the nervous accompaniment to Und wüßten’s die Blume; the eerie premonitions of Mahler in Das ist ein Flöten; and the subtly expressive key changes in Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen.

Throughout, special attention should be paid to the piano. Schumann may be inspired by the possibilities of the human voice, but his own instrument plays a central role here, often doubling the voice or taking the melodic line for its own. The piano epilogues sometimes provide the most subtle comment on the real meaning of the poems.

Quintet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 44

On September 12, 1840, Schumann married the young piano virtuosa Clara Wieck, a match that had been bitterly opposed by her father. With his father-in-law’s lawsuits and assaults on his character behind him, Schumann settled down to one of the happiest and most productive phases of his life, and his interests appeared to change by the year. From 1840 came a series of song-cycles, from 1841 a number of symphonic works, and in 1842 Schumann turned to chamber music. But this was not an easy transition for a composer who did not play a stringed instrument, and the three string quartets he wrote that summer gave him unusual difficulty. And so it must have been with some relief that Schumann fused the string quartet and the piano in his next composition, a Piano Quintet that he began on September 23 and completed October 12. The first performance, a private one with Clara at the piano, took place in November. A second performance was scheduled in the Schumann home on December 8, but Clara was sick and so Mendelssohn replaced her and sight-read the piano part; the members of the Gewandhaus Quartet (whose first violinist Ferdinand David would three years later give the first performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto) were the other performers. That would have been an evening to sit in on, not just for the distinction of the performers but also to watch two composers at work: at the end of the read-through, Mendelssohn suggested several revisions, including replacing one of the trio sections of the scherzo, and Schumann followed his advice.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet is his most successful chamber work. The addition of the piano–Schumann’s own instrument–to the string quartet seems to have inspired him in a way the quartet form did not, and this is the first great piano quintet, to be followed over the next century by those of Brahms, Franck, Dvořák, and Shostakovich (though in fairness it should be noted that Mozart may have beaten him to it, having specified that several of his piano concertos could be performed as piano quintets). Schumann’s piano quintet has a clear star: the piano is the dominant force in this music–there is hardly a measure when it is not playing–and Schumann uses it in different ways, sometimes setting it against the other four instruments, sometimes using all five in unison.

The opening is a perfect example of the latter. This aptly-named Allegro brillante bursts to life as all five instruments shout out the opening idea, whose angular outline will shape much of the movement. Piano alone has the singing second subject: Schumann marks this dolce as the piano presents it, then espressivo as viola and cello take it up in turn.This second theme may bring welcome relief, but it is the driving energy of the opening subject that propels the music, and–built up to nearly symphonic proportions–it powers the movement to a resounding close.

The second movement–In modo d’una Marcia–is much in the manner of a funeral march, though Schumann did not himself call it that. The awkward tread of the march section–in C minor–is interrupted by two episodes: the first a wistful interlude for first violin, the second–Agitato–driven by pounding triplets in the piano. Schumann combines his various episodes in the final pages of this movement, which closes quietly in serene C major. The propulsive Scherzo molto vivace runs up and down the scale, and again Schumann provides two interludes: the first feels like an instrumental transcription of one of his songs, while the second powers its way along a steady rush of sixteenth-note perpetual motion.

The last movement is the most complex, for it returns not just to the manner of the opening movement but also to its thematic material. This Allegro, ma non troppo begins in a “wrong” key (G minor) and only gradually makes its way to E-flat major; while its second theme, for first violin, arrives in E major. At the climax of this sonata-form structure, Schumann brings matters to a grand pause, then re-introduces the opening subject of the first movement and develops it fugally, ingeniously using the first theme of the finale as a countersubject. It is brilliant writing, and it drives the Quintet to a triumphant close.

Clara Schumann, perhaps not the most unbiased judge of her husband’s work, was nevertheless exactly right in her estimation of this music. In her diary she described it as “Magnificent–a work filled with energy and freshness.”