ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9 Fantasie, Op. 17

Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano

Robert Schumann, the “herald of a new poetic age”, in the words of his biographer, John

Daverio, carved out a unique position for himself in the world of German Romanticism,

especially in the creation of a new genre of solo piano music, which consisted of a cycle

of miniatures, often provided with evocatively poetic titles. The present recording

features Schumanns three-movement Fantasie in C major. Op. 17 and the playfully

mysterious and kaleidoscopic Carnaval, Op. 9, a series of miniature character portraits

with a wide range of moods and textures. Chi-Chen Wu performs these works on a copy

ofal9th-century Viennese fortepiano by Rodney J. Regier.

ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9 Fantasie, Op. 17

[T]-[l] Fantasie in C major, Op. 17

0-[li Carnaval, Op. 9

Total Time: 62’22

Chi-Chen Wv, fortepiano (Rodney J. Regier Freeport, Maine)

8 07052 0

ROBERT SCHUMANN Carnaval, Op. 9

Fantasie, Op. 17

Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano

%

The Romantics"^

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Carnaval, Op. 9

Fantasie, Op. 17

Chi-Chen Wv,fortepiano

(Rodney J. Regier Freeport, Maine)

2

Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) Total Time: 62’22 Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 ^ \J] Durchausphantastisch und leidenschafilich vorzutragen.12'57

\J} Mdssig. Durchaus energisch.730

[1] Langsam getragen. Durchaus leise zu halten. 10^49

Carnaval, Op. 9 0 No. 1. Preambule.223

0 No. 2. Pierrot.220

0 No. 3. Arlequin.1V7

0 No. 4. Valse noble.2'06

0 No. 5. Eusebius.2V2

0 No. 6. Florestan.039

^ No. 7. Coquette..140

0 No. 8. Replique^ Sphinxes.033

^ No. 9. Papillons.031

0 No. 10. A.S.C.H. - S.C.H.A.: Lettres dansantes.r06

0 No. 11. Chiarina.124

0 No. 12. Chopin.123

0 No. 13. Estrella.031

0 No. 14. Reconnaissance.142

0 No. 15. Pantalon et Colombine.IV1

0 No. 16. Valse allemande-Paganini...221

S No. 17.Aveu.049

0 No. 18. Promenade..222

0 No. 19. Pause.049

0 No. 20. Marche des Davidsbiindler contre les Philistins.3 42

3

Chi-Chen Wu, fortepiano

I raised by World Journal, Chicago for her “amazing

"playing”, “symphonic, expansive texture of breathless

virtuosity” (Historical Keyboard Society), and her

Schumann performance, in which “the music comes to life in

a new way” (Early Music America), pianist Chi-Chen Wu

has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto

soloist in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain,

Japan, Taiwan, China, the Aspen Music Festival, Monadnock

Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Concert

Series among others. Her concerts have been broadcast

on NPRs Simply Grand Concert Series and NPR - From

^.^.W The Top in Boston. Musicians and conductors with

whom she has concertized include Karl-Heinz Steffens, Jonathan McPhee, Zuill Bailey,

members of the Julliard String Quartet, Takacs String Quartet, musicians from the

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and members of the Boston Symphony as well as

New York Philharmonic orchestras.

A native of Taiwan and prize winner of several Taiwanese national piano competitions,

Wu came to the United States for graduate study and received two masters degrees, piano

performance and collaborative piano, and a doctorate from New England Conservatory

(NEC), where her teachers included Jacob Maxin, Irma Vallecillo, John Moriarty,

Kayo Iwama, and John Greer. She has also worked with Thomas Quasthoff, Martin Katz,

Kim BCashkashian, Lawrence Lesser, and Gabriel Chodos. Upon her graduation from NEC

with Distinction in Performance and Academic Honors, she was appointed Assistant

Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In addition to her teaching duties

at NTNU, she also served as coordinator of collaborative piano study and developed the

graduate programs curriculum. In 2007, Dr. Wu accepted a position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, where she

taught piano, studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, and conducted research on historical

performance practice with Neal Zaslaw. Continuing with her research interests,

in the summer of 2011 she presented a research paper on Schumanns

metronome markings at World Piano Conference in Serbia. This paper received

“Diploma of Excellence” from the World Piano Teachers Association, the

highest accolade of this organization. As a recording artist, Chi-Chen s Musica Omnia album of the complete

Schumann sonatas for piano and violin (MO 0611) won two Gold Medals from

the Global Music Awards and was named in the Top 10 “Best Classical Recordings of 2015” on The Big City, New York which included the New York Philharmonic. She has recorded Haydn Lieder on a replica of Walter fortepiano with soprano Andrea Folan for Musica Omnia. Her recital and discussion on piano collaboration are featured on the DVD

“Performing the Score” released in 2011. Dr. Wu is piano professor and coordinator of collaborative piano at the University of

Wyoming. Her students have been prizewinners in numerous competitions, including the northwest division of the MTNA competition, and have been accepted to prestigious schools

such as the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, McGill University, and Conservatoire de Paris for graduate study. During the summer, she teaches at the Killington Festival in Vermont.

Dr. Wu is currently President of the Wyoming Music Teachers Association and is represented by

Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, www.ccwpiano.com

Robert Schumann: Pianist, Composer and Writer

Robert Schumann, like Handel and Telemann before him studied law at university, but abandoned his degree in order to become both a poet and a musician. His life up to the

age of 20, when he began piano studies in Leipzig with Friedrich Wieck, later to become his bitter antagonist and father-in-law, was that of a literary buff; he was uncommonly well read

in a wide range of German literature. He became the first truly idiomatic musical critic as well as an exceptional composer of Lieder, due to his lifelong interest in the written word. Matriculating

at Leipzig University as a law student in 1828 he (as he wrote to his mother) intended to settle in Heidelberg, both to further his legal studies and to expand his “intellectual circle”. The initial

plan was for him to return to Leipzig by Easter of 1830.

En route to Heidelberg in May 1829 he was overcome by an “extraordinary desire” to play

the piano. While passing through Frankfurt: .. .on May 14 he strolled into a piano dealers shop, introduced himself as the valet of an

English nobleman interested in purchasing an instrument, installed himself at a piano

and played to his heart s content for three hours. Although he promised to return in two

days with a definitive answer from his master, he was, by that time, as he proudly related

the anecdote to his mother, already in Riidesheim drinking Riidesheimer beer.”

{John Daverio: Robert Schumann Herald of a New Poetic Age, 1997)

Schumanns time in Heidelberg seems to have been devoted to most everything but pursuit

of his legal studies. Though enrolled in several courses in constitutional and international law he

appears to have avoided attending the lectures, instead immersing himself in the study of various

languages including French, Italian, English and (according to one source) Spanish. After

matriculating in Heidelberg he set off on a two-month tour of Switzerland and Italy, where he

was first enchanted and later (as he wrote in his diaries) bored by the operas of Rossini.

Schumanns literary background uniquely equipped him to note down his observations

about a host of subjects. As he increasingly embraced music as a career path, his writing skills

made him one of the most eloquent and innovative writers on the subject, enabling him to

produce music criticism to a level that few others have attained. Parallel to cultivating his writing

skills, he pursued piano performance with gusto, with another player friend, August Bohner,

exploring the four-hand repertory of his latest musical god, Franz Schubert, whose death in 1828

caused the eighteen-year-old Schumann to spend an entire night in weeping (as he wrote at the

time). The strongest literary influence on Schumann, who knew the works of Goethe and Schiller

intimately was the ironic German novelist and humorist, Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich

Richter 1763 - 1825), whose works were characterized by sudden contrasts and interrupted

episodes - he was both admired and ridiculed for endless digressions within his narratives and the

deliberate frustration of expectation, characteristics which Schumann adopted for certain of his

works, especially the cycles of miniatures for solo piano. In these works the movements often end

inconclusively or cut suddenly from one to the next, an effect that many of the first listeners to

these works found disconcerting. (Schumann himself, aware of the radical nature of his music,

advised listening to the Papillons cycle more than once before judging its effect).

6

Though for a time (several times, really), Schumann entertained the idea of studying

with Mozarts longer-lived rival, J. N. Hummel, he finally opted to submit to Wiecks regimen

in Leipzig which its author promised would, within three years, turn Schumann into a

greater pianist than either Hummel or that other famous and much-esteemed virtuoso,

Ignaz Moscheles. All this time Schumann continued his exploration of the works of

Schubert, especially the later ones,

including the majestic and profound String

Quintet in C major, D. 956, which he

personally recommended to Wieck as a

must-study piece. Around this time

Schumann had his first encounter with the

violin virtuosity of Nicolo Paganini, which

both delighted and disturbed him, and

turned him to writing some variations on

the Caprices, and paying homage to the

Italian in his Camaval, Op. 9. By 1829 -

1830 Schumann was honing his pianistic

skills in earnest and also composing for

the medium, his first efforts consisting of

a virtuosic Toccata in C major (completed

by 1832, published two years later), which

expressed his revolutionary pianism in

recognizably Baroque forms, putting his

study of the works of Handel and Bach to

good use. Music had clearly triumphed

over the law, as Schumann wrote to his

mother in July 1830, describing his

“twenty-year struggle” between poetry and

prose, or music and law.

Fortepiano by Rodney J. Regier

7

Schumann: Fantasie in C major, Op. 17:

Schumanns Fantasie, Op. 17 dates from 1836, with its first version drafted out by June

of that year. According to research by Nicholas Marston (quoted by Schumann

scholar, the late John Daverio), it was originally created by Schumann as a response to

unhappiness over his temporary parting from Clara, during the “summer of despair”, which

occurred during that year, when Schumann was forbidden by Friedrich Wieck to have any

contact with his daughter. The Fantasie, as he wrote to Clara two years later embodied the

passionate outpouring of his longing for her and his pain at their enforced separation, (during

which he attempted to forget Clara in the company of other women and alcohol). Having

penned the first movement, originally titled “Ruins: Fantasia for the Pianoforte”, Schumann,

by early September had been partially distracted from his loss of Clara by an invitation to

contribute towards the cost of erecting a monument to Beethoven in his home town of Bonn,

that initiative spearheaded by, among others, Franz Liszt.

In a letter to the publisher Friedrich Kistner, Schumann explained: “Florestan &

Eusebius [Schumanns poetic alter-egos] would very much like to do something for

Beethovens Monument and have written something to that end with the title ‘Ruinen,

Trophaeen, Palmen. Crosse Sonate f d. Pianof Fiir Beethovens Denkmal’”. The idea was to

publish his work and to donate a portion of the proceeds towards the cost of the monument.

Although Schumann then turned to a Sonata in F minor (now lost), the Fantasie was

far from done with. After its initial rejection for publication, Schumann took the opportunity

(in early 1838) to revise the work thoroughly, finally having it accepted for printing by

April of that year, over three years after his initial “lament” for Clara had been penned.

In his biography of Schumann, “Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age”’, John Daverio details the

vicissitudes surrounding the completion and naming of this singularly personal work, which

at one time or another bore titles such as: Phantasien, Fata Morgana (after a sorceress of

Sicilian legend), and Dichtungen: Ruinen, Siegesbogen, Sternbild (Poems on ruins, triumphal

arches and constellations). In his search for a suitable title, Schumann acknowledged that

T;

the work occupied somewhat nebulous terrain between

“Sonata” and “Fantasie”, his use of the word “ruins” as

much an acknowledgement of his debt to classical

(i.e. sonata) forms as it was a reference to his ruined

“summer of sadness”. By 1839 the work had shed its

poetic titles, but retained a dedication to Franz Liszt,

instigator of the Beethoven monument to which

Schumann had sought, with this expanded and passion¬

ately virtuosic work, to contribute.

The two sides of Schumanns artistic persona,

Florestan and Eusebius (personifying, in turn, impetuosity

and introspection) seem to inhabit this work jointly,

Florestan taking the honours in the second movement

and Eusebius owning the almost-prayerftil finale. The

opening movement (subtitled “fantastic and passionate

throughout”) finds the two alter-egos in an equal and

balanced contest. In a letter to Clara, Schumann

referred directly to the one literary reference remaining

in the work, from Friedrich Schlegel’s Die Gebiische'.

“Through all the tones in this colourful earthly dream, a quietly drawn-out tone

sounds for one who listens furtively.” Schumann posed her the question: “Aren’t you the

tone in the motto? I believe so.” Schumann’s original homage to Beethoven survives in a

musical reference to the final number in the composer’s song cycle An die feme Geliebte,

which appears in a coda at the conclusion of the first movement.

Schumann in Leipzig, 1830 By October 20 Schumann was installed in the Wieck home in Leipzig where, as he later

wrote, he devoted at least six to seven hours daily to piano practice. Within the year he

had become disenchanted by Wiecks method of teaching and, at least for a time, flirted

with the notion of departing for Vienna to study with Moscheles for a year or so. He also revisited

the idea of apprenticing himself to Hummel, in part because of Hummel’s broad range of

activities as Kapellmeister, pedagogue, performer and composer. Naturally Wieck took offense at

the suggestion, and relations between him and Schumann were strained for a time, though

temporarily mended, but clearly on the way towards the bitter recriminations between the two

over Schumanns later desire to court and later marry Wieck’s daughter, Clara, now just 11 years

old, 9 years Schumanns junior and her father’s star pupil.

Also by 1831 Schumann was taking lessons in composition - the only ones he would ever

take - from Heinrich Dorn, a conductor and composer of vocal music, both lieder and opera.

His enthusiasm for the rigors of counterpoint found favor with the young Schumann and

resonated with his study of the Baroque masters Handel and Bach. Schumann gradually

acclimated to Dorn’s austere and stiff personality, and similarly began to absorb the rigorous art

of counterpoint. This phase was short lived, for by 1832 Schumann had ceased studies with Dorn

and become more absorbed in creating his own compositions, which included re-workings of

Paganini’s Caprices (which he called Intermezzi). His never-ending exploration of literature led

him to discover the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, opening up what he described as “new worlds”

for his investigation. As was the case with Jean-Paul, Schumann found Hoffman’s writing both

stimulating and disturbing, especially his exploration of the divided self, a concept with which

Schumann already identified strongly. By 1 July, 1831 we find Schumann’s first reference to the

characters Florestan and Eusebius, whom he characterized as his “best friends”, both of whom

were actually poetic projections of opposing personalities which he recognized in himself:

Eusebius, the reflective and scholarly dreamer and Florestan (the name perhaps following

Beethoven’s operatic hero), the man of purpose and action.

10.-5

That same year Schumann encountered for the first time one of his exact contemporary

musical idols in the person of Fryderyk Chopin. On 7 December, 1831 in an ecstatic review in

the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung of his Variations on Mozart’s La ci darem la mano, published

in 1827 as opus 2, for piano and orchestra, Schumann acknowledged the Polish pianist with

the memorably enduring phrase “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”, not only establishing

Chopin’s reputation in print, but also his own as a music reviewer of uncommon eloquence

and perceptiveness. While he was acknowledging Chopin’s position in the musical pantheon,

Schumann noticed for the first time a problem with the middle finger of his right hand,

which was ultimately was to deprive him of the pursuit of his intended career as piano

virtuoso and push him towards pursuing composition full time. It began with a numbness in

that finger and may have been exacerbated by Schumann’s attempts to strengthen it with

a rather disturbing device called a chiroplast, a contraption that was recommended by several

pianists, including the well-known pedagogue, Frederic Kalkbrenner, but vehemently opposed

by Friedrich Wieck. In any case, by the end of 1832 Schumann was resigned to the condition

and referred to his right hand as “lame”.

Carnaval, Op. 9: In tht winter of 1835 Schumann completed two major works for solo piano, his

Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 and the strange and mercurial Camaval, Op. 9. Both of these

works were linked to Schumanns infatuation with Ernestine von Fricken, whose

acquaintance he made first in 1834, and in whom he was, for a time, romantically interested.

As the works tide suggests, Camavalwzs completed in early 1835, in time for the carnival

season that precedes Lent. The work is populated by various fantastic characters from

Schumanns imagination, re-positioned in a dream-scape that is in equal parts representative of

the commedia deW arte and the David band of Schumanns idealistic inner world, continuing

their eternal fight against the “Philistine” enemies of art. As John Daverio describes it:

''Carnaval (its title, by Schumanns own account, a reflection of the works completion

around carnival season) beautifully demonstrates the process whereby a biographical subject is

transformed into an aesthetic counterpart. As Schumann explained it in a letter to [Ignaz]

Moscheles of 22 September 1837, most of the compositions twenty-one movements are based

on the pitch equivalents of the letters “ASCH” the name of the village from which his “musical

girlfriend” hailed, and also the only “musical” letters in Schumanns own name. The letters

yield three configurations of pitches, or “Sphinxes”, as Schumann calls them, each laid out

in long notes between the eighth and ninth pieces, Replique and Papillons, of the finished set:

(l)SCHA = Eb (the German pitch equivalent of S) C B (the German equivalent of H) A;

(2)AsCH=AbCB; and (3) A S C H = A Eb C B. Interestingly enough, the first Sphinx,

derived from a reshuffling of the letters into the order in which they appear in Schumanns

name, is not employed as generative material for any of the pieces in Carnaval. Schumann thus

casts himself as an unseen presence, a master puppeteer regulating the motions of his creations

from behind the scenes.” The works original title read “Faschung - Schwanke auf vier Noten fiir Pianoforte von

Florestan”, (“Carnival pranks based on four notes for piano, by Florestan”), later dropped by

Schumann at the request of the publisher. The twenty movements are imbued with

fantastic and mercurial elements, their cast of characters appearing and vanishing in a dream¬

12

like and impressionistic fashion. In any case, the (unnamed) reviewer for the Hamburger

musikalische Zeitung on 11 October, 1837 was perplexed: a pot-pourri, he called it, but in no

way a work of art. The cast includes love-interests Ernestine and Clara, composer-colleagues

Chopin and Paganini, as well as characters from Schumanns own literary fantasy concealed

as figures from the commedia deW arte, such as Arlequin, Pierrot, Pantelone and Columbine.

There are reminiscences of Schumanns own works {Papillons, Op. 2 in no. 6, Florestan, for

example). The dream-like quality of the little vignettes is underlined both by their brevity

and also the frequent, sudden interruptions between one idea and the next. Schumann

himself complained that critics often failed to understand the wit and humour that under¬

pinned many of his works, seeking “grace and charm” instead. Schumanns use of the term

“Witz” (wit), a term familiar also to Schumanns literary guru, Jean Paul, specifically meant

the ability to find a relationship between apparently disparate elements, and to place them in

juxtaposition in a way that reveals their similarities, and, thus, makes sense, generating artistic

coherence and unity. In Carnaval, it is Schumanns use of his fragmentary musical-letter

“Sphinxes” that provides a coherent underpinning for the work as a whole. As an ultimate

gesture of integration, the final “March of the Band of David against the Philistines” binds

the work together, with its echoes of the opening movement (and a further quotation

from Papillons, Op. 2). -Peter Watchom, Cambridge, MA, April, 2017

13