3. Robert Schumann: Waldeszenen
If I had to use only one word to describe Robert Schumann’s music, I would chose the word ’personal’. His music is often inspired by his own inner world, his loved ones, or literature. In this suite short pieces follow each other, like reading through chapters of a novel, while the author guides us into an enchanted forest, showing us its hidden treasures.
We do not hear exact sounds taken from nature or their imitation: everything is seen through the eyes of a poet, the ways certain scenes make him feel.
This suite was published in 1850-1851, and contains 9 pieces with the following titles:
Entry
Hunters on the lookout
Lonely flowers
Haunted place
Friendly landscape
Wayside inn
Bird as a prophet
Hunting song
Farewell
In detail I would like to write about the third piece, called Lonely flowers, which is a tiny gem and my personal favorite form Waldeszenen. It is barely 3 minutes long (depends on the performer), but it still has a story to tell, with beautiful melodies, subtle poliphony and sudden harmonic changes from major to minor keys. Flowes are an interesting element from nature to write music about, since they do not make a sound, the composer has the freedom to express his own emotions he experienced while seeing them, so here we can hear a piece of Robert Schumann’s soul.
For this suite I chose Clara Haskil’s interpretation. She was a Romanian-Jewish pianist, an excellent performer of Scarlatti’s and Mozart’s works, but she played early romanticism era repertoire too during her career.
@une-barque-sur-l-ocean - Baki-Szmaler Noémi, guest editor