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Does anyone here adore his music? Any recommendations? I want to play one of his pieces but don't know which ones are nice...

magnezium,

Play the maestro's whole repertoire!

Just kidding! Seriously almost everything penned by Schumann is more than good. The well-known pieces are either lengthy sonatas or big suites/variations, etc. There're, however, some quite lovely smaller pieces for you to venture into. From the top of my head I have:

Arabesque, Op.18
Novelette No.1 in F
Romance No.2 in F#, Op.28
Fantasiestuck No.1

I'm sure others will provide more.

[ June 21, 2001: Message edited by: AndrewG ]

I LOVE Schumann! Here are some of my favorites: Aufshwung (Soaring), Widmung (the Liszt transcription), anything from the album for the young (even the really easy pieces are beautiful to play) and Romance (Op 28 #2) Jodi

Blumenstück, Op. 19, very underplayed.
Any of Kinderscene Op. 15. Actualy, learn the whole thing. It works very, very well as a set.


Some great works to shoot for down the road:

Fantasy, Op. 17 - my favorite of his big works.
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 - my other favorite of his big works.
Carnival, Op. 9 - Another favorite. Rachmaninoff's recording of it will make your jaw drop.
Humoreske Op. 20 - Perhaps my favorite of all Shumann's works. It is amazing how he portrays different kinds of humor in this work, a quiet smile, a loud guffaw, irony of defeat, triumph, and many more. A very deep work that grows more understandable with the gain of life experiences.

I must admit that when I was still in my teens, I detested Schumann's music. It is more difficult to play than it looks, and a lot of it doesn't have the technical flash that I was looking for. Also, my teacher started me on Papillons, a piece that I still can't stand. I didn't understand that you have to be advanced far enough above the technicial difficulties to be able to focus on the message of the music and not try to turn it into show pieces. Not that he didn't write show pieces - the Toccata is more than a handful, and may have been the most difficult piece yet written at the time that he composed it.

Ryan

I second all the recommendations - especially the Novelette #1. The Album for the Young is a wonderful collection. I know they make young students play them but some of those miniatures are real gems.

Just my $0.2...

Magnezium,

I'm not nearly as advanced as all the pianists on this forum. I have played several pieces from Album for the Young, and IMBO (in my beginner's opinion), I really enjoyed them. In fact, these pieces were my first introduction to Schumann.

Mike

[ June 21, 2001: Message edited by: Mike Pappadakis ]

I'm not familiar with Schumann's Novelettes. After reading the recommendations for Novelette No. 1, I downloaded a copy from the Sheet Music Archive and slop-read through it. I have a question, how detached should the chords on the first page and recurring passages be? Seems like these need to be flutter-pedaled.

Novelette No. 1 seems like a great work, I might take it on!

For Schumann, I love the F Major Novelette. But I also like the D Major. I played Papillons for my junior recital; and I still love that piece. But my all-time favorite Schumann is the great Symphonic Etudes.

Sincerely,

Thank's for the inspiration!
After reading the posts on Schuhmann yesterday, I took out the "Album for the Young" buried deep down in a drawer.
So, instead of pracising my Chopin I got hooked on some of the very romanic and soft pieces included in this work - to be played at night .
Ruth

MacDuff,

Novelette No.1 in F is the most well-known of the eight in the set. It is in Rondo form. Page one and similar repetitions should sound like a 'march'. It's sort of dignified and unhurried. Yes, each chord is primarily detached. I don't have the score in front of me this moment. If I remeber correctly it should be A-B-A-C-A-B-A. The 'B' parts are hauntingly beautiful. It's a love song to me. You might be able to listen to a performance or two in MP3 somewhere on the Internet I'm sure. Horowitz (albeit this maestro is not my favorite pianist) did a good job in this piece.

MacDuff

There is also a Richter disk on Melodiya that I really like that has Noveletten 1, 2, and 8, as well as most of Op. 12 and the Humoreske Op. 20. It is Volume 4 of the Richter Edition.


Eldon,

Sorry to speak badly of Papillons - I knew somebody here would have played it and liked it. I think I just got off on the wrong foot with it

Ryan

Ryan,

Nothing wrong with not liking some music after you learned it. It happened to me also quite a few times. I learned and after much work managed to memorize Shostakovitch's Prelude and Fugue in Db. I thought I also did more than a decent job on it. It wowed many in the audience but I never liked it, not then, not now.

As to Papillon, Op.2 I recitaled it in its entirety. I liked it quite a bit. Years later I heard a live performance by Samson Francois. It's particularly revelatory to me since I knew this piece inside out when I heard it live! He gave a scintilating reading of it. Quite remarkable.

[ June 22, 2001: Message edited by: AndrewG ]

Andrew,

You may have put your finger on it. There have been occasions where I learned a piece that I didn't like, until I heard an extraordinary performance that "revealed" the work to me. In the case of Papillon, I didn't care for the way I played it, but have never heard what I thought was an exemplary performance of it either.

On the opposite spectrum there are pieces that I really enjoy listening to but don't like to play. Liszt's 6th Hungarian Rhapsody was like that for me. It is very exciting to listen to, but I really didn't enjoy playing those repeated octaves

Ryan

Ryan said: You may have put your finger on it. There have been occasions where I learned a piece that I didn't like, until I heard an extraordinary performance that "revealed" the work to me. In the case of Papillon, I didn't care for the way I played it, but have never heard what I thought was an exemplary performance of it either."

You see, there is a case for listening to recordings.

Mat D.

No argument. Read my last post in the Recordings as Models thread.

Ryan

Thanks all for replying... i think i'll be trying out some of these pieces... the Novellette and the Kinderscenen look interesting...

Wow! I finally got up enough nerve to register! I recently spent a few months concentrating on some Schumann. I agree, the Novellette No. 1 is a fun piece. I purchased Op.82 Forest Scenes and Op. 26 Viennese Carnival and really enjoyed playing those.

I've never done much Schumann but I found his shorter easier pieces to be delightful. Some of them were written for his children whom he loved dearly but wasn't really able to take care of them. Years ago my piano teacher introduced me to First Loss which I guess was written for his first child who died. I'm not an expert on music history but when I get time (ha ha) I want to read up more on Schumann. I believe I read he was friends with Johann Brahms who stayed at this house and babysat the children when they couldn't be there.

I really don't get into Schumann except for two pieces - the Piano Quintet and the song cycle Dichterliebe. There were some wonderul performances of the quintet at the Van Clibrun, and the archive is still up. As for Dichterliebe, Dietrich Fischer-Diesekau (baritone) released two recordings - one sublime and one GODAWFUL.

Another short piece by Schumann which is marvelous is his Op.15 no.7 "Traumerei", I think Horowitz had one of the best interpretations of it, he made it truly shine!

Well, I haven't heard much Schumann at all, but I can say that I am particularly fond of his piece "Carnival in Vienna." It's beautiful, energetic, and joyful; makes me want to go to Vienna myself! I have it on C.D. played by Annerose Schmidt, and her playing is beautiful on it.

There's my input; again, that's almost all I've heard of his, but I think you should definitely look into it!