Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
Robert Schumann was born at Zwickau, Saxony (now Germany) on 8 June 1810 and died in Endenich on 29 July 1856. The Fantasiestücke were originally written for clarinet and piano in April 1849. The arrangement for viola and piano being performed today is by Leonard Davis, former principal violist of the New York Philharmonic.
The years of 1848-50 witnessed a surge in Schumann’s creative output. In a letter to conductor and composer Ferdinand Hiller dated 10 April 1849, Grove Music online states that
Schumann juxtaposed the surge in his productivity with the upheavals wrought by the mid-century revolutions: ‘For some time now I’ve been very busy – it’s been my most fruitful year – it seemed as if the outer storms compelled people to turn inward’. Indeed, in 1849 alone Schumann completed nearly 40 works, many of them sizable. Nor was this creative outburst without its financial rewards; Schumann’s annual income from composing increased from 314 thalers in 1848 to 1275 thalers in 1849. He further supplemented his earnings, beginning in November 1848, by giving private instruction to Heinrich Richter. The productive phase reaching into the early part of 1850 also proved to be a period of physical and psychological well-being.
According to John Daverio in his biography of Schumann, the Fantasiestücke Op. 73 belong to a group of pieces (including the other instrumental works written in 1849, Fünf Stücke im Volkston for cello, op. 102, Drei Romanzen for oboe, op. 94, as well as the Märchenbilder for viola and piano, op. 113 (1851), and Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola and piano, op. 132 (1853)) that were conceived as “cycles of poetic miniatures, each unified… by a central tonic and an overall affective profile.” Daverio goes on to describe how the three movements of the Fantasiestücke as thematically interrelated.
The close relationship among the three pieces comprising the Fantasiestücke is further underscored by the attacca indications linking each of the movements and, more important, by a web of thematic connections. The overlapping third chains of the principal melody of No. 2 derive from the counterline to the opening idea of No. 1. No. 3 recalls material from both of the preceding pieces: the allusion, in it’s a section, to the main idea of No. 1 is so deftly woven into the melodic fabric that one is apt to miss it on first hearing…; the coda then recalls the opening of No. 2 (at first piano, dolce), which, as we have noted, is traceable to the very beginning of the cycle. Yet in no way do the various reminiscences overtly call attention to themselves; Schumann’s refined technique of lyric recall rather makes for a delicate tracery of fleeting allusions, half-remembered ideas. One mid-nineteenth-century critic who was particularly struck by the intimate unity of these pieces came to essentially the same conclusion as the refraction of a single mood (Stimmung) into diverse psychological moments, all of them beautifully captured in sound.
-Program notes by Dr. Daniel Doña