7/13–Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (“Scenes from Childhood”)

Schumann began his musical studies on the piano, and all his life he loved that instrument above all others. In the hope of strengthening his hands for keyboard performance, he ironically injured them badly enough to preclude any chance of a pianistic career. So he turned entirely to the craft of composition, and as a young man, during the decade of the 1830s, he wrote music exclusively for solo piano. His muse in this endeavor was Clara Wieck, the woman who became one of the most renowned concert pianists of the 19th century, a composer in her own right, whom he married in 1840 after years of struggle and conflict.

Friedrich Wieck–Clara’s father, teacher, and booking agent–was intent on developing his daughter’s talent and launching her career, and was less than enthusiastic about her suitor, half composer and half freelance journalist, with a drinking problem and no steady income. An overbearing parent–but, to do him justice, one who may well have perceived and feared Schumann’s fundamental, underlying emotional instability, that would finally lead to madness and attempted suicide. But the young lovers shared a passion for each other and a passion for music, and their marriage would mostly be a happy one; they inspired and nurtured each other, and delighted in their eight children. Their courtship years, complicated by enforced separations and several legal proceedings – Wieck tried everything to keep the two apart – were at the same time enriched by the music they shared. One of the piano suites Robert wrote with Clara in mind is “Kinderszenen,” Scenes from Childhood, dating from 1838. He wrote to her: “Is [this] an unconscious response to the meaning of the words you once wrote to me, ‘you sometimes give me the impression of a child’? If this is so, you will see that the child has grown wings…You will, no doubt, take pleasure in playing these little pieces, but you will have to forget that you are a virtuoso. You will have to guard against effects, but let yourself surrender to their very simple, natural and unstudied grace.”

Schumann further noted about this suite that it contains “reminiscences of a grownup for grownups” – the pieces are mostly uncomplicated, but they are not especially intended to be performed by children, though one of them, “Traeumerei,” Dreaming, is familiar to every grownup child who ever took piano lessons.

The thirteen pieces have descriptive titles:
Of Foreign Lands and Peoples (in the key of G Major);
A Curious Story (D Major);
Blind Man’s Bluff (B Minor);
Pleading Child (D Major);
Happiness (D Major);
An Important Event (A Major);
Dreaming (F Major, the most famous piece in the set);
At the Fireside (F Major);
Knight of the Hobby-Horse (C Major);
Almost Too Serious (G Sharp Minor);
Frightening (E Minor);
Child Falling Asleep (E Minor);
The Poet Speaks (G Major).

program notes by Andrea Lamoreaux