2024-25

When Daniel Barenboim said “Schumann has a concept of music, but not really a concept of sound,” he was referring to works like Syrinx, which, in place of music, simply has three signs on the score : ***, or works like Humoresque, which includes notated musical lines that the performer is instructed not to actually play, but instead to hear only in their mind. In short, Schumann’s music raises more questions than it answers, and it’s because of this that many composers have been tempted to step into his fertile creative world, a world that takes tremendous pleasure, free musical thought, invention, and fantasy. Tristan Murail, who established an international presence outside of France through his 12-year residency in New York, wrote that Schumann’s “Scenes from Childhood has musical, expressive and evocative potential that far surpasses Schumann's version for piano. Almost all of them are little masterpieces, with great inventive power, based however on simple and concise ideas.” For his work for alto flute, cello, and piano entitled Une relecture des Kinderszenen de Robert Schumann, Murail writes “for my vision of Scenes from Childhood, I did not hesitate to use the entire modern palette of instrumental techniques, thus multiplying available timbres and the acoustic effects resulting from their combinations.” Between 2013 and 2015, American pianist David Kaplan commissioned 17 composers to create a cycle of piano works inspired by Schumann. Argento presents four outstanding works from this collection, all by American composers. The first, Augusta Read Thomas’s Morse Code Fantasy, leaves the most memorable impression of all the works because it completely captures the raised-question spirit of Schumann. It does so by working on several levels: a purely musical level, and an implied “signalling” level derived from its morse code. The listener has no choice but to listens in two ways simultaneously. Caroline Shaw’s mit gutem Humor, un poco lol ma con serioso vibes is the briefest possible representation of Schumann’s extroverted Florestan followed by his introverted Eusebius. Hannah Lash captures Schumann’s intimacy, candor, and romantic spirit with her Liebesbrief an Schumann; Marcos Balter insists on Schumann’s mind bending eccentricity in his work ***.

Robert Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale was originally conceived as a "symphony in three movements," composed simultaneously with his "Spring" Symphony. In these early months of his marriage to Clara, Robert experienced a creative "spring" -- renewed musical energy flowed into the scores, only hampered by the medium of performance that was sound of the orchestra. On Daniel Barenboim's point, Kimmy Szeto's arrangement for large ensemble polishes the sound apparatus to a crystalline clarity for Schumann's music to glimmer.

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Discussion with members of Argento to follow the concert.

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