Most Characteristically Schumann
Here Schumann is at his most characteristic and, consequently, most successful.
The three works on this recording all date from 1849. At that time Robert Schumann was nearing the end of his "Dresden" period and was about to move to Dusseldorf for the last creative stage in his career. In the way of brief summary, Schumann's most productive, and probably also most inspired, years were those spent in Leipzig, during the 1830's and early 1840's. He was busy with the newly founded Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, a highly respected journal that exists still today. He was also busy writing one piano masterpiece after another--Carnaval, Symphonic Etudes, Kreisleriana, Kinderscenen etc.--and giving full reign to his highly-charged imagination, especially as personified in those familiar characters, Florestan and Eusebius.
1840 witnessed Schumann's marriage and new interest in other forms of musical composition: songs, symphonies (1841), chamber music (1842). By 1844 he had reached a state of nervous exhaustion and gave up editorship of the Journal, leaving Leipzig altogether by end of the year for Dresden. The next years brought such important works as the Piano Concerto, the opera Genoveva, incidental music to Byron's Manfred, and the start of his Scenes from Goethe's Faust. After the move to Dusseldorf in 1850 Schumann wrote relatively few major works; these include the Cello Concerto, "Rhenish" Symphony, and A Minor Violin Sonata. (There are many other compositions, some with moments of great beauty, but on the whole not on the level of the 'earlier masterpieces.)
The three Fantasy Pieces, Op. 73 are for clarinet and piano. Typically, they may also be played with a violin or, more effectively, cello. Here Schumann is at his most characteristic and, consequently, most successful. The pieces, which follow each other without break, are short, wonderfully melodious and perfectly suited to the instruments involved. For all his lack of experience with orchestral instruments, Schumann here wrote idiomatically conceived lines that show off the cello (clarinet!) to great advantage.
Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70 (how curious the title, Slow and Fast, sounds in English, yet perfectly normal in Italian) is originally for horn and piano. Again, performance on cello does no harm to the music--some might even prefer this alternate setting--and allows one to hear different combinations of sonorities. Although Schumann did not miscalculate, he nevertheless makes endurance demands on a hornist that cellists needn't trouble with, hence the greater frequency of performances of Op. 70 with stringed instrument. The Adagio serves as extended introduction to the Allegro, which is a large rondo in design.
Five Pieces in Folk-Tune, Op. 102 are original cello pieces. Each is a small-scale character piece of no specific programmatic content. Had they been written in his early years, each would have undoubtedly carried some fanciful, descriptive title; but Schumann tended toward more abstraction as he grew older, even going to the trouble of excising some of his early Romantic slogans in later editions of pieces (for example the Davidsbundler Dances). While the 5 Stucke perhaps do not match the other works here recorded in spontaneity, they do at least provide the cello with some attractive music in a style in which the instrument has very little repertory.
