Release Date: 12 January 2000
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 4891030501447
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: SCHUMANN, R.
Description
Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)Etudes en forme de variations, Opus 13 (Symphonlsche Etueden)Robert Schumann must seem in many ways typical of the age in which helived, combining a number of the principal characteristics of Romanticism inhis music and in his life. Born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of a bookseller,publisher and writer, he showed an early interest in literature, and was tomake a name for himself in later years as a writer and editor of the NeueZeitschrift fuer Musik, a journal launched in 1834.After a period at university, to satisfy the ambitions of his widowedmother, Schumann, still showing the wide interests of a dilettante, turned morefully to music under the tuition of Friedrich Wieck, a famous teacher whoseenergies has been largely directed towards the training of his daughter Clara,a pianist of prodigious early talent.Schumann's own ambitions as a pianist were to be frustrated by aweakness of the fingers, the result, it is supposed, of mercury treatment forsyphilis, which h had contracted from a servant-girl in Wieck's employment.Nevertheless in the 1830s he was to write a great deal of music for the piano,much of it in the form of shorter, genre pieces, often enough with someextra-musical, literary or?áautobiographical association.In health Schumann had long been subject to sudden depressions and hadon one occasion attempted to take his own life. This nervous instability hadshown itself in other members of his family, in his father and in his sister,and accentuated, perhaps, by venereal disease, it was to bring him finally toinsanity and death in an asylum. Friedrich Wieck, an anxious father, waspossibly aware of Schumann's weaknesses when he made every effort to prevent aproposed marriage between his daughter Clara and his former pupil. Clara wasnine years younger than Schumann and represented for her father a considerableinvestment of time and hope.It was not until 1840 that Schumann was finally able to marry Clara,and then only after the successful outcome of litigation instituted by Wieck toprevent such an eventuality. The year was one of song, with Schumann settingverses of many kinds in an incredible burst of creative energy. In the earlyyears of marriage his wife encouraged him to turn his attention to larger formsof music and to writing for the orchestra, while both of them had to make anumber of adjustments in their own lives to accommodate their differentprofessional requirements.A relatively short period based in Leipzig was followed, in 1844, byresidence in Dresden, where Wagner was now installed in the Court Theatre, hisconversation causing Schumann to retire to bed early with a headache. In 1850the couple moved to Duesseldorf, where Schumann had been appointed director ofmusic, a position the demands of which he was unable to meet, a fact that musthave contributed to his suicidal depression and final break-down in 1854,leading to his death in the asylum at Endenich two years later.Schumann wrote his Symphonic Stud
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
The Brahms Trio
Roman Fediurko
London Symphony Orchestra; Rafael Sanz-Espert
