Robert Schumann (1810- 1856)

Faschingsschwank aus Wien, op. 26

(Fantasiebilder)

1.  Allegro

2.    Romanza

3.    Scherzino

4.    Intermezzo

5.    Finale

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Fantasiestücke, op. 12

6.    Des Abends

7.    Aufschwung

8.    Warum?

9.    Grillen

10. In der Nacht 

11. Fabel

12. Traumes Wirren

13. Ende vom Lied

Recording location: Teatro Goldoni – Livorno.

Producer: Giulio Cesare Ricci

Recording engineer: Giulio Cesare Ricci

Born in Florence in 1954, Pietro Rigacci completed his musical studies at the “Cherubini” Conservatory in Florence, gaining his diploma as pianist with Maria Tipo, contemporaneously achieving the diploma in Composition. 

He won the first prize at the international competition “E. Pozzoli”, at Pescara and “Città di Treviso” competitions. Subsequently he was the winner of the following international competitions: “Clara Haskij”, “Dino Ciani” (“La Scala”), “Vianna da Motta” (Lisbon).

He played in the most important Italian theatres an took part in festivals in France, Switzerland, Portugal and Italy, beside making tours in Sweden, Norway, Finland. Ireland as well as United Kingdom where, after his concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, he was often invited to record at the B.B.C. He also recorded for R.A.I., Radio Suisse Romande and the Norwegian, Irish and Portuguese television companies. 

His repertoir includes the Classics, the Romantics, the Impressionistes, the XXth century Russian School as well as contemporary music of which he is considered a sensitive interpreter, particularly for his activity as composer. He has been invited by Luciano Berio as a soloist for the first night performance of his pieces: “Opera” at the “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino” and “La vera Storia” at “La Scala”.Robert Schumann: his Music, his Literary Influences and the Masks.

“Chopin is an artist, Schumann is a poet” – states André Gide in his Notes sur Chopin published in 1939. At first Gide planned to write an essay on both musicians, but then realized that his interest in Robert Schumann had much weakened and that he had little more to say about him. In the same essay he wrote: “I don’t need the filter of literature or painting to appreciate music and I worry little about the meaning of a piece. The meaning restrains it and troubles me. And it is exactly for this reason that notwithstanding the glamorous adaptations of Schumann, Schubert and Fauré. I am mostly fond of a music without words or that, at most, has the pretext of a liturgical mysticism.”

In these words it is possible to find the key to the singular opposition artist vs poet through which Gide expressed the opposition between the two musicians.

Schumann’s personality is, in fact, a very complex one and clearly separated between the two poles of music and literature, which he tried to reconcile with a firm gesture of deep and absolute devotion. Schumann’s clear words contrast with Gide’s ambiguous distinctions: “The musician must necessarily be a poet, since the aesthetic of an art is that of the others, only the materials are different”. So, according to Schumann, maybe more than for any other Romantic composer, the composer is included in the circle of those who aim at the confluence of the arts in a whole unique to realize the reward of creativity, so that he doesn’t hesitate to state: “From Jean Paul Richter I learned more about counterpoint than from my master of composition”. 

Jean Paul Richter (1763- 1825) the most read author of his times since he published in the 1795 the novel Hesperus, writer and poet worshipped by women, flattered by the young university “èlite”, held in high esteem by men of great culture, exerted his influence upon the young Schumann. The other star that led his sentimental education was Hoffman (1776-1882), musician and novelist, who created the character of the fanciful Kreisler. In his Johannes Kreislers, des Kaperllmeister, musikalische Leiden (The musical pains of J.K., chapel-master), Hoffman describes the two of music, the heavenly one, leading to sublimation, and the dark, demoniac one, revealing both even in the description of his fanciful hero, who walks about in an old suit with two hats, one upon the other, with two quills thrust into a red blet, like daggers.

In Fantasiestücke (Fantastic Pieces), op. 12, as in other Schumann’s operas the presence of the spirit of Hoffman can be perceived: his fantastic and unreal world, full of nightmares, of restless dreams, like ominous sparrow-hawks, in a spectral light often meets its equivalent in Schumann’s music. There is a kinship, an elective affinity between the two musicians: their opera springs from the dangerous and treacherous abysses od madness and despair, the marasmus that only genius and vigour can control; and the compact, extremely clear musical structure revealed by Schumann’s operas is it’s the most manifest proof. Through it the evil and corrupting forces can be subdued. It is the only route to follow in order not to lose one’s way in the impeding darkness. Even though the night will prevail in the end, as long as reasons enlightens the way, it appears to the composer as a phantasmagorical landscape, a province of the soul from which he draws the mysteries, the visions, the most boundless hints and transfers them to music.

Fantasiestücke op. 12 and the subsequent Fantasiestücke op. 111 (1851), were born in this spiritual atmosphere. Composed in1837 and dedicated to Anna Robena Laidlaw, they appear as a sequence of short images, whose explanations suggest poetic intuitions, whereas in Fantasiestücke op. 111 the explanations are vaguer.

The first piece, Des Abends (At evening), is an intimate and subtle evocation of incipient night. The second piece, Aufschwung (Rush), is a composition full of fervent, passionate vibrations. The hesitate inflexions of questioning gleam through Warum? (Why?). the following piece, Grillen (Chimeras), is witty and bizarre. The sense of a stormy night, hardly appeased in the central part, reverberates in In der Nacht (In the night). The sense of infancy as a fatally past age distinguishes Fabel (Fairy Tale). Traumes Wirren (Troubled Dreams) shows a whimsical visionary brightness. Ende vom Lied (Farewell) emerges with a springing rhythm and concludes the cycle with the soft outlines of the coda. A certain unity is obtained not so much by succession of tonalities as by modulating passages which link the conclusion of every piece to the beginning of the next. 

Schumann was 28 when, in autumn 1838, he went to Vienna enlivened with hopes and plans. The poet Adlabert vom Chamisso (1781- 1838) had convinced him to try his fortune (which had been so unkind to him in Lipsia) in the Austrian capital, and the success that Clara Wieck had achieved there with her concerts during the past winter convinced the two lovers to move to that city as soon as they were married. Schumann hoped that in Vienna he could get the license to publish the “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik”, the musical review he started in 1834 and which had achieved a high reputation even outside Lipsia. He went back to his native city on April 1839, disappointed by the superficiality of the Viennese milieu and bureaucratic indifference, but he brought the manuscript of Schubert ninth symphony, “The Great”, and the first four movements of his Faschingsschwank aus Wien: Fantasiebilder(Vienna carnival, Fantastic Visions).

In this composition is especially reflected the joyful elation at the discovery of the new city, which made him thoughtless and self-confident. In those times Schumann looked at life with smiling eyes and abandoned himself to merry atmosphere of the carnival that inspired serene and playful thoughts in his spirit, even if only for a short time.

When he was 25, Schumann had already written Carnival, op. 9, a procession of traditional masques, with real and fanciful characters. Similarly, the second Carnival (as happened for the Fantasiestücke op. 111) presents general explanations and Schumann describes it to Simonin de Sire, to whom had dedicated op. 26, as a “Great Romantic Sonata”. In the two Carnevali Schumann interweaves the themes which enliven the masked ball and the disguised; the annihilation of one’s identity, the exchanges of roles, the division of self, the revelation of the most secret and darkest side of oneself under the protection of the mask. Romanticism developed and enriched this great theme already so dear to the Rococo period –it is sufficient to think of the last act of Le Nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Folies Françaises, ou Les Dominos (1722) by François Couperin. The romantic carnival has been often described by E. Th. A. Hoffman, in Brambilla Princess, for instance. Mention must also be made of the romance Flegeljahreby Jean Paul: in his romance Siebenkäs the heart-rending final farewell of the two friends culminates in the exchanges of clothes. 

In Faschingsschwank aus Wien Schumann caught chiefly the joyful aspect of the masked ball exorcising through the music its disturbing and threating sides. The first movement Allegro is a succession of “sentimental” waltzes in “rondò” form, where Schumann inserts some measures from the “Marseillaise”, forbidden by Viennese censorship, one more tirade against philistines, like the concluding march of Carnaval, op. 9. After a tender, dreamy Romanza, follows a lively Scherzino. The subsequent Intermezzoshows a fervent passionate quality. The fifth movement Finale, written after his return to Lipsia, reflects freely the forms of the Sonata and concludes the opera with a magnificent dash. 

Antonio Mazzoni

English Translation: Franco Giovannone