COMPOSERS: Schumann
LABELS: Claves; Alpha
ALBUM TITLE: Schumann
WORKS: Fantasiestücke; Humoreske; Kinderszen; Romanzen; Waldszenen; Blumenstück; Arabeske
PERFORMER: Finghin Collins (piano)Eric Le Sage (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 50-2601-02; 098
There is an endless fascination
about Schumann’s prolific piano
music, shoehorning into seemingly
simple forms the multiple personas
representing the introspective and
the extrovert sides of his personality
he called respectively Eusebius and
Florestan, or breaking the mould
altogether as the rift between the
two becomes more extreme. Hearing
so many of his works in sequence
makes for compelling listening, as
abiding as consecutive reading of
ETA Hoffmann’s short stories. And
if Finghin Collins’s programme
makes the greater impact of the two
starting-points for Schumann series
represented here, it is partly because
he ranges more widely.
Launching with the Op. 12
Fantasiestücke, Collins at first has a
long way to go to match the inward
poetry and tenderness of magisterial
Argerich and Perahia. Yet his fantasy
has its own fascination in the lighter
numbers – ‘Traumes Wirren’ dazzles
with deft, even articulation – and
the unrest of longer inspirations like
‘In der Nacht’ is ballasted by solid
consolation. A mere two years at the
end of Schumann’s first miraculous
phase gave birth to all the works
on this first disc; and yet how far
we seem to have come by the time
we reach the lopsided masterpiece
that is the Arabeske – starting, in
Collins’s careful hands, with a
haunting shadow-play of the daylight
Blumenstück which precedes it.
Familiar scenes of childhood and
forest life on the second disc are
overcast with melancholy, and he
asks troubling questions even of
the more outwardly conventional
‘Fantasy-Pieces’ from the other end
of Schumann’s all-too-short creative
life. If you prefer smiling with a sigh,
Lupu’s Kinderszenen and Arabeske are
certainly easier listening.
Eric Le Sage’s clutch of early
linked miniatures and whimsical
variations favours the more robust
side of young Schumann. Even given
the greater reticence of the piano in
this recorded picture, he’s clearly
ebullient Florestan to Collins’s
thoughtful Eusebius and makes his
biggest impact in the more rollicking
of the Davidsbündlertanze. Yet while
Collins leaves me wanting to hear
more, Le Sage quickly pales alongside
the more encyclopedic and mercurial
qualities of Richter and Perahia. It
was disingenuous of Alpha to package
everything in the name of Clara
– Papillons, after all, was dedicated to
Schumann’s three sisters-in-law – and
even odder to link that to a portrait by
Hippolyte Flandrin subjected to three
pages of learned art criticism in the
booklet. David Nice