ROBERT SCHUMANNCarnaval, Op. 9Fantasie, Op. 17Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano

ROBERT SCHUMANNCarnaval, Op. 9Fantasie, Op. 17Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano 26The Romantics

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ROBERT SCHUMANN

Carnaval, Op. 9Fantasie, Op. 17

Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano(Rodney J. Regier Freeport, Maine)

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Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) Total Time: 62’22Fantasie in C major, Op. 171 Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen .....................................................12’572 Mässig. Durchaus energisch .......................................................................................................................7’303 Langsam getragen. Durchaus leise zu halten................................................................................10’49

Carnaval, Op. 94 No. 1. Préambule ............................................................................................................................................2’235 No. 2. Pierrot .....................................................................................................................................................2’206 No. 3. Arlequin ................................................................................................................................................1’077 No. 4. Valse noble............................................................................................................................................2’068 No. 5. Eusebius .................................................................................................................................................2’029 No. 6. Florestan ................................................................................................................................................0’590 No. 7. Coquette.................................................................................................................................................1’40- No. 8. Réplique- Sphinxes ..........................................................................................................................0’53= No. 9. Papillons ................................................................................................................................................0’51q No. 10. A.S.C.H. – S.C.H.A.: Lettres dansantes.........................................................................1’06w No. 11. Chiarina ............................................................................................................................................1’24e No. 12. Chopin.................................................................................................................................................1’23r No. 13. Estrella.................................................................................................................................................0’31t No. 14. Reconnaissance................................................................................................................................1’42y No. 15. Pantalon et Colombine..............................................................................................................1’01u No. 16. Valse allemande-Paganini........................................................................................................2’21i No. 17. Aveu ......................................................................................................................................................0’49o No. 18. Promenade.........................................................................................................................................2’22p No. 19. Pause.....................................................................................................................................................0’19[ No. 20. Marche des Davidsbündler contre les Philistins..........................................................3’42

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Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano

Praised by World Journal, Chicago for her “amazingplaying”, “symphonic, expansive texture of breathlessvirtuosity” (Historical Keyboard Society), and her

Schumann performance, in which “the music comes to life ina new way” (Early Music America), pianist Chi-Chen Wuhas appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concertosoloist in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain,Japan, Taiwan, China, the Aspen Music Festival, MonadnockMusic Festival, Boston Early Music Festival Fringe ConcertSeries among others. Her concerts have been broadcast on NPR’s Simply Grand Concert Series and NPR – FromThe Top in Boston. Musicians and conductors with

whom she has concertized include Karl-Heinz Steffens, Jonathan McPhee, Zuill Bailey,members of the Julliard String Quartet, Takács String Quartet, musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and members of the Boston Symphony as well asNew York Philharmonic orchestras. A native of Taiwan and prize winner of several Taiwanese national piano competitions, Wu came to the United States for graduate study and received two master’s degrees, pianoperformance and collaborative piano, and a doctorate from New England Conservatory (NEC), where her teachers included Jacob Maxin, Irma Vallecillo, John Moriarty, Kayo Iwama, and John Greer. She has also worked with Thomas Quasthoff, Martin Katz, Kim Kashkashian, Lawrence Lesser, and Gabriel Chodos. Upon her graduation from NEC with Distinction in Performance and Academic Honors, she was appointed Assistant Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In addition to her teaching duties at NTNU, she also served as coordinator of collaborative piano study and developed thegraduate program’s curriculum. In 2007, Dr. Wu accepted a position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, where shetaught piano, studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, and conducted research on historical

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performance practice with Neal Zaslaw. Continuing with her research interests,in the summer of 2011 she presented a research paper on Schumann’smetronome markings at World Piano Conference in Serbia. This paper received“Diploma of Excellence” from the World Piano Teachers Association, thehighest accolade of this organization. As a recording artist, Chi-Chen’s Musica Omnia album of the completeSchumann sonatas for piano and violin (MO 0611) won two Gold Medals fromthe Global Music Awards and was named in the Top 10 “Best ClassicalRecordings of 2015” on The Big City, New York which included the New York Philharmonic.She has recorded Haydn Lieder on a replica of Walter fortepiano with soprano Andrea Folan forMusica Omnia. Her recital and discussion on piano collaboration are featured on the DVD“Performing the Score” released in 2011. Dr. Wu is piano professor and coordinator of collaborative piano at the University ofWyoming. Her students have been prizewinners in numerous competitions, including thenorthwest division of the MTNA competition, and have been accepted to prestigious schoolssuch as the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, McGill University, and Conservatoirede Paris for graduate study. During the summer, she teaches at the Killington Festival in Vermont.Dr. Wu is currently President of the Wyoming Music Teachers Association and is represented byGreat Lakes Performing Artist Associates. www.ccwpiano.com

Robert Schumann: Pianist, Composer and Writer

Robert Schumann, like Handel and Telemann before him studied law at university, butabandoned his degree in order to become both a poet and a musician. His life up to theage of 20, when he began piano studies in Leipzig with Friedrich Wieck, later to become

his bitter antagonist and father-in-law, was that of a literary buff: he was uncommonly well readin a wide range of German literature. He became the first truly idiomatic musical critic as well asan exceptional composer of Lieder, due to his lifelong interest in the written word. Matriculatingat Leipzig University as a law student in 1828 he (as he wrote to his mother) intended to settlein Heidelberg, both to further his legal studies and to expand his “intellectual circle”. The initialplan was for him to return to Leipzig by Easter of 1830.

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En route to Heidelberg in May 1829 he was overcome by an “extraordinary desire” to playthe piano. While passing through Frankfurt:

…on May 14 he strolled into a piano dealer’s shop, introduced himself as the valet of anEnglish nobleman interested in purchasing an instrument, installed himself at a pianoand played to his heart’s content for three hours. Although he promised to return in twodays with a definitive answer from his master, he was, by that time, as he proudly relatedthe anecdote to his mother, already in Rüdesheim drinking Rüdesheimer beer.”

(John Daverio: Robert Schumann Herald of a New Poetic Age, 1997) Schumann’s time in Heidelberg seems to have been devoted to most everything but pursuitof his legal studies. Though enrolled in several courses in constitutional and international law heappears to have avoided attending the lectures, instead immersing himself in the study of variouslanguages including French, Italian, English and (according to one source) Spanish. Aftermatriculating in Heidelberg he set off on a two-month tour of Switzerland and Italy, where hewas first enchanted and later (as he wrote in his diaries) bored by the operas of Rossini. Schumann’s literary background uniquely equipped him to note down his observationsabout a host of subjects. As he increasingly embraced music as a career path, his writing skillsmade him one of the most eloquent and innovative writers on the subject, enabling him toproduce music criticism to a level that few others have attained. Parallel to cultivating his writingskills, he pursued piano performance with gusto, with another player friend, August Böhner,exploring the four-hand repertory of his latest musical god, Franz Schubert, whose death in 1828caused the eighteen-year-old Schumann to spend an entire night in weeping (as he wrote at thetime). The strongest literary influence on Schumann, who knew the works of Goethe and Schillerintimately was the ironic German novelist and humorist, Jean Paul (Johann Paul FriedrichRichter 1763 – 1825), whose works were characterized by sudden contrasts and interruptedepisodes – he was both admired and ridiculed for endless digressions within his narratives and thedeliberate frustration of expectation, characteristics which Schumann adopted for certain of hisworks, especially the cycles of miniatures for solo piano. In these works the movements often endinconclusively or cut suddenly from one to the next, an effect that many of the first listeners tothese works found disconcerting. (Schumann himself, aware of the radical nature of his music,advised listening to the Papillons cycle more than once before judging its effect).

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Though for a time (several times, really), Schumann entertained the idea of studying with Mozart’s longer-lived rival, J. N. Hummel, he finally opted to submit to Wieck’s regimenin Leipzig which its author promised would, within three years, turn Schumann into a greater pianist than either Hummel or that other famous and much-esteemed virtuoso, Ignaz Moscheles. All this time Schumann continued his exploration of the works of Schubert, especially the later ones,including the majestic and profound StringQuintet in C major, D. 956, which hepersonally recommended to Wieck as amust-study piece. Around this timeSchumann had his first encounter with theviolin virtuosity of Nicolo Paganini, whichboth delighted and disturbed him, andturned him to writing some variations onthe Caprices, and paying homage to theItalian in his Carnaval, Op. 9. By 1829 –1830 Schumann was honing his pianisticskills in earnest and also composing for the medium, his first efforts consisting of a virtuosic Toccata in C major (completedby 1832, published two years later), whichexpressed his revolutionary pianism inrecognizably Baroque forms, putting hisstudy of the works of Handel and Bach togood use. Music had clearly triumphedover the law, as Schumann wrote to hismother in July 1830, describing his“twenty-year struggle” between poetry andprose, or music and law.

Fortepiano by Rodney J. Regier

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Schumann: Fantasie in C major, Op. 17:

Schumann’s Fantasie, Op. 17 dates from 1836, with its first version drafted out by June of that year. According to research by Nicholas Marston (quoted by Schumann scholar, the late John Daverio), it was originally created by Schumann as a response to

unhappiness over his temporary parting from Clara, during the “summer of despair”, whichoccurred during that year, when Schumann was forbidden by Friedrich Wieck to have any contact with his daughter. The Fantasie, as he wrote to Clara two years later embodied the passionate outpouring of his longing for her and his pain at their enforced separation, (duringwhich he attempted to forget Clara in the company of other women and alcohol). Havingpenned the first movement, originally titled “Ruins: Fantasia for the Pianoforte”, Schumann,by early September had been partially distracted from his loss of Clara by an invitation to contribute towards the cost of erecting a monument to Beethoven in his home town of Bonn,that initiative spearheaded by, among others, Franz Liszt. In a letter to the publisher Friedrich Kistner, Schumann explained: “Florestan &Eusebius [Schumann’s poetic alter-egos] would very much like to do something for Beethoven’s Monument and have written something to that end with the title ‘Ruinen,Trophaeen, Palmen. Grosse Sonate f. d. Pianof. Für Beethovens Denkmal’”. The idea was topublish his work and to donate a portion of the proceeds towards the cost of the monument. Although Schumann then turned to a Sonata in F minor (now lost), the Fantasie was far from done with. After its initial rejection for publication, Schumann took the opportunity(in early 1838) to revise the work thoroughly, finally having it accepted for printing by April of that year, over three years after his initial “lament” for Clara had been penned. In his biography of Schumann, “Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age”’, John Daverio details the vicissitudes surrounding the completion and naming of this singularly personal work, whichat one time or another bore titles such as: Phantasien, Fata Morgana (after a sorceress of Sicilian legend), and Dichtungen: Ruinen, Siegesbogen, Sternbild (Poems on ruins, triumphalarches and constellations). In his search for a suitable title, Schumann acknowledged that

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the work occupied somewhat nebulous terrain between“Sonata” and “Fantasie”, his use of the word “ruins” asmuch an acknowledgement of his debt to classical (i.e. sonata) forms as it was a reference to his ruined“summer of sadness”. By 1839 the work had shed itspoetic titles, but retained a dedication to Franz Liszt,instigator of the Beethoven monument to whichSchumann had sought, with this expanded and passion-ately virtuosic work, to contribute.

The two sides of Schumann’s artistic persona,Florestan and Eusebius (personifying, in turn, impetuosityand introspection) seem to inhabit this work jointly,Florestan taking the honours in the second movementand Eusebius owning the almost-prayerful finale. Theopening movement (subtitled “fantastic and passionatethroughout”) finds the two alter-egos in an equal andbalanced contest. In a letter to Clara, Schumannreferred directly to the one literary reference remainingin the work, from Friedrich Schlegel’s Die Gebüsche:

“Through all the tones in this colourful earthly dream, a quietly drawn-out tone sounds for one who listens furtively.” Schumann posed her the question: “Aren’t you the tone in the motto? I believe so.” Schumann’s original homage to Beethoven survives in a musical reference to the final number in the composer’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, which appears in a coda at the conclusion of the first movement.

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Schumann in Leipzig, 1830

By October 20 Schumann was installed in the Wieck home in Leipzig where, as he laterwrote, he devoted at least six to seven hours daily to piano practice. Within the year hehad become disenchanted by Wieck’s method of teaching and, at least for a time, flirted

with the notion of departing for Vienna to study with Moscheles for a year or so. He also revisitedthe idea of apprenticing himself to Hummel, in part because of Hummel’s broad range ofactivities as Kapellmeister, pedagogue, performer and composer. Naturally Wieck took offense atthe suggestion, and relations between him and Schumann were strained for a time, thoughtemporarily mended, but clearly on the way towards the bitter recriminations between the twoover Schumann’s later desire to court and later marry Wieck’s daughter, Clara, now just 11 yearsold, 9 years Schumann’s junior and her father’s star pupil. Also by 1831 Schumann was taking lessons in composition – the only ones he would evertake – from Heinrich Dorn, a conductor and composer of vocal music, both lieder and opera.His enthusiasm for the rigors of counterpoint found favor with the young Schumann andresonated with his study of the Baroque masters Handel and Bach. Schumann graduallyacclimated to Dorn’s austere and stiff personality, and similarly began to absorb the rigorous artof counterpoint. This phase was short lived, for by 1832 Schumann had ceased studies with Dornand become more absorbed in creating his own compositions, which included re-workings ofPaganini’s Caprices (which he called Intermezzi). His never-ending exploration of literature ledhim to discover the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, opening up what he described as “new worlds”for his investigation. As was the case with Jean-Paul, Schumann found Hoffman’s writing bothstimulating and disturbing, especially his exploration of the divided self, a concept with whichSchumann already identified strongly. By 1 July, 1831 we find Schumann’s first reference to thecharacters Florestan and Eusebius, whom he characterized as his “best friends”, both of whomwere actually poetic projections of opposing personalities which he recognized in himself:Eusebius, the reflective and scholarly dreamer and Florestan (the name perhaps followingBeethoven’s operatic hero), the man of purpose and action.

That same year Schumann encountered for the first time one of his exact contemporarymusical idols in the person of Fryderyk Chopin. On 7 December, 1831 in an ecstatic review inthe Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung of his Variations on Mozart’s Là ci darem la mano, publishedin 1827 as opus 2, for piano and orchestra, Schumann acknowledged the Polish pianist with the memorably enduring phrase “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”, not only establishing Chopin’s reputation in print, but also his own as a music reviewer of uncommon eloquence and perceptiveness. While he was acknowledging Chopin’s position in the musical pantheon,Schumann noticed for the first time a problem with the middle finger of his right hand, which was ultimately was to deprive him of the pursuit of his intended career as piano virtuoso and push him towards pursuing composition full time. It began with a numbness inthat finger and may have been exacerbated by Schumann’s attempts to strengthen it with a rather disturbing device called a chiroplast, a contraption that was recommended by severalpianists, including the well-known pedagogue, Frèdèric Kalkbrenner, but vehemently opposedby Friedrich Wieck. In any case, by the end of 1832 Schumann was resigned to the conditionand referred to his right hand as “lame”.

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Carnaval, Op. 9:

In the winter of 1835 Schumann completed two major works for solo piano, his Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 and the strange and mercurial Carnaval, Op. 9. Both of theseworks were linked to Schumann’s infatuation with Ernestine von Fricken, whose

acquaintance he made first in 1834, and in whom he was, for a time, romantically interested.As the work’s title suggests, Carnaval was completed in early 1835, in time for the carnival season that precedes Lent. The work is populated by various fantastic characters fromSchumann’s imagination, re-positioned in a dream-scape that is in equal parts representative ofthe commedia dell’ arte and the David band of Schumann’s idealistic inner world, continuingtheir eternal fight against the “Philistine” enemies of art. As John Daverio describes it: “Carnaval (its title, by Schumann’s own account, a reflection of the work’s completionaround carnival season) beautifully demonstrates the process whereby a biographical subject istransformed into an aesthetic counterpart. As Schumann explained it in a letter to [Ignaz]Moscheles of 22 September 1837, most of the composition’s twenty-one movements are basedon the pitch equivalents of the letters “ASCH” the name of the village from which his “musicalgirlfriend” hailed, and also the only “musical” letters in Schumann’s own name. The lettersyield three configurations of pitches, or “Sphinxes”, as Schumann calls them, each laid out in long notes between the eighth and ninth pieces, Replique and Papillons, of the finished set:(1) S C H A = E b (the German pitch equivalent of S) C B (the German equivalent of H) A;(2) As C H = A b C B; and (3) A S C H = A Eb C B. Interestingly enough, the first Sphinx,derived from a reshuffling of the letters into the order in which they appear in Schumann’sname, is not employed as generative material for any of the pieces in Carnaval. Schumann thuscasts himself as an unseen presence, a master puppeteer regulating the motions of his creationsfrom behind the scenes.” The work’s original title read “Faschung – Schwänke auf vier Noten für Pianoforte vonFlorestan”, (“Carnival pranks based on four notes for piano, by Florestan”), later dropped bySchumann at the request of the publisher. The twenty movements are imbued with fantastic and mercurial elements, their cast of characters appearing and vanishing in a dream-

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like and impressionistic fashion. In any case, the (unnamed) reviewer for the Hamburgermusikalische Zeitung on 11 October, 1837 was perplexed: a pot-pourri, he called it, but in noway a work of art. The cast includes love-interests Ernestine and Clara, composer-colleaguesChopin and Paganini, as well as characters from Schumann’s own literary fantasy concealed as figures from the commedia dell’ arte, such as Arlequin, Pierrot, Pantelone and Columbine.There are reminiscences of Schumann’s own works (Papillons, Op. 2 in no. 6, Florestan, forexample). The dream-like quality of the little vignettes is underlined both by their brevity and also the frequent, sudden interruptions between one idea and the next. Schumann himself complained that critics often failed to understand the wit and humour that under-pinned many of his works, seeking “grace and charm” instead. Schumann’s use of the term“Witz” (wit), a term familiar also to Schumann’s literary guru, Jean Paul, specifically meant the ability to find a relationship between apparently disparate elements, and to place them injuxtaposition in a way that reveals their similarities, and, thus, makes sense, generating artisticcoherence and unity. In Carnaval, it is Schumann’s use of his fragmentary musical-letter“Sphinxes” that provides a coherent underpinning for the work as a whole. As an ultimate gesture of integration, the final “March of the Band of David against the Philistines” binds the work together, with its echoes of the opening movement (and a further quotation from Papillons, Op. 2). -Peter Watchorn, Cambridge, MA, April, 2017

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Recording Dates:June 1-3, 2016

Recording Location:Morning Thunders Studio

Watertown, MA

Executive Producer:Peter Watchorn, Musica Omnia, Inc.

Engineer/Producer:Joel Gordon

Post Production:Joel Gordon, Chi-Chen Wu

Fortepiano:R. J. Regier, Freeport Maine, 6½-octave

fortepiano based on instruments by Graf and Bösendorfer

Booklet Notes:Peter Watchorn

Graphic Design and Layout:Nathan Lambshead, Goodnews Graphics

Front Cover:Scene from a Play (anon.)

French 16th CenturyBridgeman Art Library

www.musicaomnia.org

Chi-Chen Wu