CD135 The Poet Speaks: Schumann Piano Music
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The Poet Speaks: Jeanne Golan, piano
CD135 $15.95
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CONTENTS |
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| 1 | Papillons Opus 2 | |
| 2-3 | Zwei Lieder Liebeslied (Widmung) Frühlingsnacht |
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| 4 | Der Dichter spricht Opus 15, No.13 | |
| 5-22 | Davidsbündlertänze Opus 6 18 Characteristücke |
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| I Lebhaft Innig Mit Humor Ungedulding Einfach Sehr rasch Nicht schnell Frisch Lebhaft |
II Balladenmäßig. Sehr rasch Einfach Mit Humor Wild und lustig Zart und singend Frisch Mit gutem Humor Wie aus der Ferne Nicht schnell |
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Listen:
“Balladenmässig. Sehr rasch” from Davidsbündlertänze, opus 6
NOTES
Poetry writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm.
Websters 7th New Collegiate Dictionary
Of memory and remembrance
Robert Schumann was a true romantic poet. He was raised in a literary household: his father was a publisher and bookstore owner who encouraged his son to develop both his literary and musical gifts. As a writer, Schumann created the first magazine about music. The New Muisc Journal was a publication that contained imaginative and engaging discourses on contemporary music and the state of the arts. Yet it was through musical rather than verbal expression that Schumann ultimately found his poetic voice.
From his earliest years, Schumann both played the piano and composed music. He found musical language to be as natural as speech, with meaning as specific as the written word. Yet he also revelled in the capacity of music to enable each listener to draw from his own set of experiences, so that that the emotional journey through his compositions is personal and universal at the same time.
This brings us to the heart of Schumann's piano music, and to his particular collection of pieces. The core of his musical expression hinges upon memory and remembrance. In choosing a medium that relies on the passage of actual time, Schumann is able to create true remembrance. Schumann's mastery in this aspect of composition comes from his recognition that the recollection of something special has the power and depth to crystallize an experience. His ability to provide a special moment in the initial stage of a composition, when the listener is simply being in that moment, and then recall it when it is both unforeseen and most potent makes Schumann's work sublimely human.
About the cycles
The two cycles, Papillons and Davidsbündlertäntze, provide Schumann with a time-frame that is sufficiently long to develop powerful impact that remembrance can have. In many ways, these are two versions of the same work. Papillons is the young composer's first foray into transforming a string of short, disparate dances into a unified work whose freshness and illumination required tremendous compositional risk-taking. Davidsbündlertäntze is the fully matured cycle that fulfills the promise of Papillons: the work is epic in scope and profound in conception.
Both cycles contain an implied narrative of a masked ball, which was a popular event of the 1830's. Each cycle begins with a sweeping introduction that spearheads a set of dances. In the final movement of each work, Schumann incorporates a tolling bell to clarify the hour, which establishes the 'real' time. In Papillons, the young man's composition, the night's follies conclude at six in the morning. Correspondingly, Davidsbündlertäntze's excursions culminate at midnight.
Although these programmatic elements of dances and tolling bells are evident in both Papillons and Davidsbündlertäntze, the real power of these cycles draws from Schumann's purely musical device of creating a special moment at the beginning which is recalled at the end of the work. In each case, the special moment is a melody that first appears after the introduction. And in each case, the reappearance of this melody in the last movement happens so much later in real time that it is a true memory being recollected. Although these melodies return, they have been transformed, as are all things in remembrance. The poignancy of thiir return is the culminating step in the transformation the listener has also undergone through the musical journey he has taken.
Papillons / Butterflies
As illustrated by the title of his op. 2, Papillons, Schumann loved allusion and the possibilities embedded therein. Papillons could refer to actual butterflies, to social butterflies, or to hoop skirts, a popular fashion of the day in which skirts were embellished with tiers of bows such that they flitted like butterflies when a woman was swept about the ball room
Papillons begins with an introduction that serves as an invitation to the dance. A string of twelve waltzes follows in quick succession, each with an abundance of mood change that gives this piece a sense of youthful, almost brash bravura. Just as the few tender moments catch the listener off guard, these moents appear to have caught the young composer off guard, because he quckly aborts them lest they reveal too much. The opening waltz is recalled in the midst of a grand finale, but the dance becomes increasingly fragments and hazy in the blur of the bell tolls and sustained pedalling (and perhaps the blur of the evening's excesses as well).
Davidsbündlertäntze / Dances of the Band of David
In many ways, I think of Davidsbündlertäntze as Schumann's purest song cycle. Although there is no text, the collection of eighteen character pieces has subtle musical and literary references that give the suggestion of a program. Schumann credits this work to two fictitious characters who had come to represent wildly different aspects of his own personality - the fiery and impetuous Florestan and the shy and contemplative Eusebius. (These are the same two characters whom Schumann uses to 'discuss' modern music in his New Music Journal.)
Schumann dvidies the eighteen pieces into two equal parts. At the end of each part, he verbally describes in the score an impulse that affects the performer's shaping of the overall work. For the conclusion of the first part, the impulse is that of Florestan grabbing Eusebius and "giving him a painful kiss on the lips." This is balanced by the notion that the last movement, which dies away with a bell tolling midnight, is an uttereance that "Eusebius superfluously adds, with his eyes filled with tears of ecstasy." The pathos of this culminating movement is further intensified by the musical context of the second impulse.
The first and last dances frame the body of the work: the opening gesture is a quote from a mazurka by Schumann's newly beloved Clara Wieck. The special moment initially appears as the second movement, which is our first insight into Eusebius as a painfully shy but poetic soul. When, sixteen dances later, Eusebius' melody re-emerges in the midst of the beatific penultimate movement that is meant to be heard "wie aus dem ferne," or, "as if from a distance," the implications of the evening are fully realized. Through the recurrance and transformation of a few musical fragments, Schumann turns this series of dances into an epic psychological drama that transcends words.
Zwei Lieder / Two Songs
A transcription of a pre-existing work is by its nature a recollection. At one level, a transcription is a way for one composer to honor another. At a more profound level, the impact of a transcription comes from the listener's previous association with the music in its original form. In 1839-40, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann began a warm and mutually supportive correspondence. Schumann admired Liszt's pianism and daring: Liszt wrote Schumann of the pleasure he took in playing Kinderscenen to his daughter as he tucked her in at night. It is not surpising that Liszt would celebrate this new-found musical kinship by setting Schumann's song Widmung (Dedication) for solo piano in the guise of Liebeslied (Love's Song). Schumann was quite flattered by the gesture. The dedicatory aspect of Liebeslied thus becomes two-fold, as Schumann had already included a quote from Schubert's setting of Ave Maria in this song. Liszt went on to transcribe Frühlingsnacht (Spring Night), to complete the set Zwei Lieder vom Robert Schumann. Both songs share the same arch of an intimate beginning that builds to a rapturous conclusion. The original song is always clear and present in Liszt's transcriptions, but after the initial verse, Schumann's melodic and harmonic language are used as a point of departure for Liszt's dazzling pianistic inspirations.
Der Dichter spricht / The Poet Speaks from Kinderscenen / Scenes from Childhood
In my choice to couple the song transcriptions with Der Dichter spricht from Kinderscenen, I was intrigued by the friendship of these two wildly different composers, and drawn to the works that both connected them and portrayed the diametrical opposition of thier individual musical extremes. Liszt's excess of brilliant and idabolical pianism, paired with the deceptive simplicity of Der Dichter spricht, also yielded some harmonic juxtapositions that I could not resist.
Der Dichter spricht, the last musical reminiscence of the autobiographical set Kinderscenen, encapsulates Schumann's essence. Whether or not Schumann is recalling the impact a poet's words may have had on an impressionable lad. Schumann is now himself the poet, the one who "creates emotional responses through meaning, sound and rhythm." This strange and haunting miniature is almost like a chorale: its rich sonorities elicit serenity and warmth. Yet there is an unexpected outburst in the middle that is never fully explained, and even the chorale itself., for all its beauty, avoids any sense of resolution or true peace until the very last chord is sounded.
Truly, the poet has spoken.
Program notes ©2002 Jeanne Golan
With Schumann Piano Music: The Poet Speaks pianist Jeanne Golan breaks from her trademark programming of combining standard and contemporary repertoire in innovative ways to focus on a composer for whome she has always felt a special affinity. In the music of Robert Schumann, she finds a unique voice that is both transcendent and ever relevant.
Ms. Golan has performed extensively throughuot the United States and Europe in every capacity as a pianist. As a soloist, she has appeared with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra under Leon Botstein, the Greenwich Orchestra and the Hunter Symphony. As a chamber musician, she has performed with the Lark and Cavani Quartets, and with members of the Boston Symphony and Metropolitan Opera Orchestras. Her extensive work with singers includes the CD, Songs of Henry Cowell (Troy240), which was hailed by Michael Tilson Thomas in the New York Times. Ms. Golan has worked with the Philip Glass Ensemble on Einstein on the Beach, and with the contemporary music groups MATA, Theodore Wiprud/New Music productions, and the Freinds and Enemies of New Music.
Actively involved in the fostering of works by new composers and discovering relatively unknown musical treasures, Ms. Golan has an impressive assortment of pieces written for her and that she has premiered. Her current work finds her in the company of Jorge Martin and Leo Ornstein.
Ms. Golan earned her Masters and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees from the Eastman School of Music. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University graduating with Distinction in Music. Her guiding forces at the piano have been Patricia Zander and Claude Frank. She is a full-time faculty member of Nassau Community College and has a studio in Manhattan.
Ms. Golan has made several solo and collaborative recordings released under the Albany, Arsis, Capstone and Newport Classic labels. She can be found on the web at www.jeannegolan.com.
© 2008 ARSIS Audio