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Best Live Recording: John Eliot Gardiner with The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Why?: John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir are best known for their renditions of classical music using period instruments and smaller ensemble sizes. I feel that their 2008 live recording of A German Requiem does a great service to Brahms’ inherently sparse, yet dramatic, musical material. Like Reinhard Goebel’s recording of Bach’s Art of the Fugue with Musica Antiqua Köln, the older instruments add a new layer of historical depth to the music that optimally reflects the composer’s intentions with the work. Moreover, the musical lines and structure of the requiem become much more apparent than in the normally heavy-handed and bombastic performances of the work by most contemporary ensembles.

Some may feel that performing a work the way the composer intended is a cop-out, given that the contemporary ideal of classical music performance is to mold the work into one’s own interpretation of it. However, Gardiner’s recording succeeds not only as a fitting document of the work in a historical context, but also one that shows a tremendous depth of understanding where the requiem’s place in Brahms’ life is concerned (more so, in my opinion, than Gardiner’s first recording of the work in 1991, or even Otto Klemperer’s for that matter). As a result, the work becomes much darker, and almost Gothic in terms of its cathedral-like resonance and the crisp clarity that can only come with using smaller orchestral and choral ensembles.

For those who might be off-put by Gardiner’s use of period instruments (as well as his use of talented, though inexperienced, singers in the Monteverdi Choir), Klemperer’s 1962 recording of A German Requiem is surely a much recommended substitute. In my opinion, however, Gardiner’s 2012 recording is, by far, the best sounding in terms of production and perhaps the most atmospheric and emotionally captivating performances of the work ever set to record. 

(Source: Spotify)

A German Requiem is, without a personal doubt, Brahms’ magnum opus and stands as one of the most revered choral works in the German language. Brahms began writing the work almost immediately after his mother died in 1865 and nearly a decade after the death of his friend and mentor Robert Schumann. The requiem marks a point in the composer’s life when personal happiness would become more and more fleeting, and as a result, the work is seething with emotion, fear and hope for a future where pain and mourning are no more.

It was well-known and documented that Brahms held no strong religious beliefs. The libretto, though derived from Christian scripture, is noticeably general in its spiritual symbolism and avoids any specific mention of Jesus Christ as the redeemer of mankind. Some of the scriptures used are surprisingly progressive, such as this statement of the cyclic nature of life and the cosmos from the Book of Peter: “Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen” (“For all flesh is like grass, and all the glory of mankind is like the flowers of the grass”). Moreover, the final movement of the requiem ends in a cyclical manner with a soft reprisal of the first movement chant from the Book of Matthew: “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet werden.” (“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted”). Despite Brahms’ apparent distaste for organized religion and Christian dogma, he remained a deeply spiritual man throughout his life—and the Kirkegaardian relationship he had with his God reflects wholeheartedly throughout the Requiem.

Naturally, the words to the Requiem were gathered by Brahms from German biblical sources, and hence the name. However, the very fact that the words are in German and not Latin—or even a Romance language—made it quite obvious he hoped to catch the attention of German audiences. Brahms began composing the work during a time in Germany when Catholics were attempting to exert stronger political power—something Brahms, in his devotion to the politics of then Minister-President of Prussia Otto von Bismark, was likely suspicious of. Additionally, over a decade of personal frustration and emotion had been brewing inside of him, all resulting from his unexpected visit to the Schumanns one fateful day in 1853. His subsequent responsibilities as the head of the Schumann household following Robert Schumann’s death only a few years after their initial meeting, combined with a loving, but seemingly tension-filled relationship with his widow, Clara Schumann, led Brahms to give up his career in music for most of his 20s. 

Brahms was also frequently bothered by the emergence of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner as leaders of what he would come to see as a revolt in Weimar against musical tradition. This “New German School” attacked those such as Brahms and Schumann for continuing to carry the banner of old musical forms and for reflecting their dedication in their compositions. In 1860, Brahms, Clara Schumann and violinist Joseph Joachim effectively declared war on Liszt and Wagner’s “uprising” by publishing a manifesto in Robert Schumann’s old music journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik—which had since become a bastion of support for the “New German School” (the term its editor Franz Brendel coined) and anti-Semitism.

What resulted was the (unfortunately named) “War of the Romantics”—and clear lines became suddenly demarcated between “traditional” and “modern” music. Moreover, Liszt had begun tempering his own adherence to “sides” by dedicating himself more and more to the Catholic Church—a move that Brahms surely must have been kept abreast of. Unfortunately, Brahms’ own political call for a strong polemic against the Wagnerites ultimately fell flat when only a handful of musicians came out in support for the conservatives’ manifesto.

All of this came to an earth-trembling boil in 1865 when Brahms lost his mother. It is no secret (particularly to armchair psychoanalysts such as myself) that Brahms had what some might call an intensely strong bond with his mother. Many believe that Clara Schumann was a replacement for her in many respects. However, Schumann’s apparent unwillingness after over a decade to move forward with Brahms emotionally, combined with the tragic death of his mother, most likely propelled the composer into a state of existential panic.

There existed nearly a dead stop in the artist’s creative output between the years of 1865-1868, save for a few sets of songs, and of course, A German Requiem, which was premiered in 1868. One could posit that the work resulted from an paradoxical sense of optimistic despair, wherein this would be his last attempt to show the world that the absolute musical forms perfected by the German composers that came before him still, in fact, had relevant contemporary value. The fact that is was written in German and not Latin surely speaks to Brahms’ belief that while German music had been betrayed by its own, it will rise again gloriously one day.

Needless to say, A German Requiem completely altered the course of German music history—not only for its nationalistic value—but also as proof to musicians and critics that the old musical ways still had value in the face of revolutionary change. In a way, one can compare Brahms’ moment in music history with that of Martin Luther in Christian history.Similarly to Luther and the Latin Bible, Brahms brought the weighty and incomprehensible Requiem mass “down to Earth” for the enjoyment of vernacular audiences. A German Requiem succeeds not only for its remarkable genius and expressive scope, but also as a unique synthesis of old intellectual formalism with populist ideals and tastes. It is truly a historical document in music history and a triumph of form over impending chaos—more so than any other work by Johannes Brahms—and for this reason, I feel that A German Requiem is, by far, his greatest work.

Grade: A+

Johannes Brahms was a mysterious man who composed some of the world’s most passionate music, brought under strict control by a heavy adherence to conventional musical forms. For Brahms, music needed to always struggle for a higher level of perfection—experimentation outside of established rules, on the other hand, should always be kept to a minimum.

Brahms became, in essence, the gruff old father figure in Western classical music who felt that things were moving too fast for comfort (an ironically antithetical viewpoint to that held by his spiritual mentor Ludwig van Beethoven). He viewed the advent of program music and the haphazard harmonic and formal experimentation of his contemporaries as suspicious, if not dangerous to the progression of Western music (with German music being considered by Brahms and many others of the time to be the pinnacle of European musical art). Brahms felt that there was still much to learn from the advances in music made by composers during the first half of the 19th century, and the idea of such music being used as a tool for pandering to the public, instead of being carefully studied and applied intellectually, aggravated the conservative composer throughout his life.

There is nothing “radical” about Brahms’ music in the sense that it pushes the boundaries of form and harmony like his contemporary and quasi-nemesis Richard Wagner. Brahms hoped to rein in many of the advances made earlier in the century by Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann so that they could be better understood and built upon incrementally. Wagner’s extremism, on the other hand, represented an antithesis of sorts to Brahms’ musical conservatism. Wagner often attacked the advances made by composers who came before him, particularly those made by Jewish composers due to his fabled anti-Semitism. Despite Wagner’s particularly hostile reputation among more conservative musical circles, under the careful sponsorship of his father-in-law Franz Liszt, he was still able to amass a legion of supporters of his highly unconventional musical and dramatic style.

While Wagner was indeed a musical genius, he held certain delusions about music, such as the supposed “fit of pique” wherein he wrote and published an article attacking the lasting musical influence of Jewish composers, such as (and with particular emphasis) Felix Mendelssohn, and Wagner’s long time supporter Giacomo Meyerbeer. This, and the composer’s lurid past as a left-wing revolutionary, made the thought of Wagner completely altering the course of German music particularly unsettling to Brahms. 

When Brahms was 20, he and his friend, the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi, began touring Europe as performing musicians. By that time they had become regionally popular in the city of Hamburg and decided they could successfully tour Europe as young, up-and-coming artists.

During this time Brahms and Reményi met with Liszt at the Court of Weimar. Brahms had always been a firm and devout skeptic, even in his youth, and he was no doubt skeptical of the great musical “charlatan” Franz Liszt. Legend has it that following Liszt’s curt play through of Brahms’ Scherzo, Op. 4 at the piano, Brahms fell asleep during a performance of the Sonata in B minor, which Liszt had only finished composing that year (he later attributed this faux pas to his exhausting travel schedule). Unlike Brahms, Reményi, particularly as a Hungarian compatriot of the elder composer, surely must have understood what he witnessed to be an awesome event in the history of music, and I am very much inclined to agree. However, Brahms had, most likely, already convinced himself that the creative output of Liszt and his bohemian ilk in Weimar was of little interest to him, and perhaps felt no desire to feign interest in Liszt’s highly unconventional sonata. In any event, the young Reményi took great offence to Brahms’ slumbering during Liszt’s performance and parted ways with him shortly thereafter—leaving Brahms to continue his tour of Europe alone.

Much of Brahms’ self-critical yet passionate nature stems from his association with Robert and Clara Schumann, and particularly from his unrequited love for the latter.  Brahms made an unexpected visit to the Schumanns in 1853 with a letter of introduction from the violinist Joseph Joachim, whom he met during his concert tour with Reményi. What resulted from this visit was Robert Schumann’s sudden, and almost excessive public praise of Brahms as a musician and composer. The 20 year old Brahms was by no means ready for the expectations Schumann’s strong vocal support had set up for him as a musician. This inability to immediately live up to the expectations among those who valued Schumann’s judgment instilled a sense of unworthiness that would haunt Brahms for the rest of his career. Despite this troubling start to his associations with the Schumanns, Brahms developed a close friendship with Schumann and his family that would last for the rest of his life.

Following Robert Schumann’s attempted suicide and subsequent internment at a mental institution in 1855, Brahms became the de facto head of the Schumann household at the age of 22. It was during this time (if not before) that he developed a deep emotional connection with Schumann’s wife, Clara Wieck Schumann. It was also an extremely unproductive time in Brahms’ career, given his new responsibilities as a caretaker for Clara and her eight children, as well as a stand in for Robert’s personal business in his absence. 

Incidentally, there are several Freudian analyses of this apparently platonic, though intensely passionate relationship (eg. Brahms’ deep rooted Oedipal complex, his childhood spent as a pianist for dance halls and brothels, etc.), but one thing remains clear: both Clara Schumann and Brahms’ bond became one of the most powerful forces in Western music at the time.

When Robert Schumann died in 1856, Brahms and Clara Schumann would spend the remaining years of their association writing music and promoting each other’s works throughout Europe. He would go on to dedicate one of his greatest compositions, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, to Clara, who then, in turn, premiered the work in Brahms’ home city of Hamburg. Together, they also did much to validate and later canonize the late Robert Schumann’s oeuvre. 

Despite Brahms’ sincere respect for the late Schumann, there is no doubt that the composer had a truer spiritual connection with Beethoven—whom Brahms hoped to one day emulate if not succeed in terms of artistic genius within the medium of absolute music. This almost monotheistic dedication to the great German composer consistently put him at odds with Wagner and his followers, whom Brahms felt were taking German music in the wrong direction. However, the composer’s new-found resolve obtained during his relationship, professional and otherwise, with Clara Schumann, led to a peak period of popularity in Europe and beyond for Brahms during the 1860s and 1870s. This did much to diffuse the spread and influence of Wagner’s controversial methods. Moreover, towards the end of the 19th century, Wagner’s harmonic style became almost a cliché among the growing pantheon of nationalist composers gaining fame throughout the world.

Composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky in Russia and Antonín Dvořák in Bohemia were often criticized for their adherence to Wagner’s methods—as his influence on their music was often unmistakably obvious. Many, as a result, gave up their adherence to Wagner’s popular and evocative style, settling instead for the more time-tested methods of Brahms and other canonical German composers (including the great composers of their own respective national traditions).

Unlike Wagner, much of Brahms’ music is written for piano as a solo or collaborative instrument, and one gathers that most of his music, orchestral and otherwise, had their beginnings with Brahms at the instrument. Also, his music is very confined and dialectic—the Dionysian restrained by the Apollonian. This means that Brahms, while being an incredibly passionate man, preferred to contain it within tried and true absolute musical forms, such as the symphony, the concerto, the sonata, etc. Liszt and Wagner, on the other hand, saw music as only an aspect of a much larger dramatic form—where the former often set literature to music, and the latter preferred to compose larger-than-life dramatic musical displays in his quest to perfect the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art.” To Liszt and Wagner, music was a tool to amaze, inspire and entertain (often in the Dionysian sense). To Brahms, music was whole and absolute in itself—co-mingling it with other artistic mediums served only to lessen its value as an autonomous art-form.

Although much of his music fails to excite on the level of some of his contemporaries, Brahms’ works are a boon for music analysts and structuralists who who want to understand the classical form at the height of its mastery. To many, Brahms represents the climax of the first Viennese school of musical expression begun by Haydn and Mozart, molded by the genius of Beethoven, and brought to a close by Gustav Mahler in the 20th century. However, what Brahms may be best known for is his role as a musical politician, and his successful campaign to keep the radicalism of Richard Wagner and his followers from completely replacing several hundred years of musical tradition with their own significant, though flawed, advances in the medium.

Best Recording: Emil Gilels with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA/1958)

Why?: Emil Gilels made several recordings of Brahms’ second piano concerto throughout his career, with his performance under the baton of Eugen Jochum in 1972 being generally regarded as his best. While I am personally very familiar with this recording, I have to say that my recent listening to Gilels’ performance of the concerto with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1958 is, beyond a reasonable doubt, the best recording of the work I have yet to hear.

Due to the outstanding acclaim given to Gilels’ rather conspicuous recording with Jochum, I figured his other recordings of the work would pale in comparison. However, this is totally wrong, in my opinion. The 1972 recording is mostly tame in its leisurely, by-the-book pace and sonic balances. While it is indeed an excellent recording and reading, it comes across rather boring by comparison.

Gilels’ exhilarating piano playing, combined with Reiner’s almost obsessive attention to structural detail and orchestral clarity, work together to create a performance that perfectly captures the “sturm und drang” essence of Brahms’ concerto—more so than any other recording of the work, in my opinion. One only has to listen to the dramatic chordal playing at the end of the first movement’s exposition to understand that Gilels truly gets the work.

My only qualms with this recording is the remastering, which tones down a lot of Gilels’ stormy playing in order to achieve a “better” balance of sound. I feel that this change is detrimental to the sound Gilels and Reiner were hoping to achieve with the performance. Somewhat fortunately, the recording can be heard in its original form here—but beware of the awful sound quality, particularly during the third movement. However, the first movement is where this alternative recording truly shines.

The concept of “sturm und drang” (“storm and stress”) was one of major importance during the developing stages of German Romanticism. “Sturm und drang” was a popular mode of artistic expression during the late-18th century, and was, in many ways, a backlash against the cold rationality that began to influence art following the advent of the European Enlightenment. However, despite the qualities of free expression so inherent to the concept of “sturm und drang,” conservative ideals of structure and form were still very much adhered to—making progress in those areas rather unlikely in German art at the time.

Though the artistic style reached its peak at the turn of the 19th century—particularly in the literary and theatrical works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller—Johannes Brahms would continue to champion the tenets of “sturm und drang” well into the second-half of the 19th century. His Second Piano Concerto is perhaps the most perfect expression of the style among his works, if not among the canon of Western Classical Music as a whole.

Brahms began working on the piece in at the age of 45 in 1878—22 years after the premier of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. It was composed towards the end of a particularly prolific decade in Brahms’ career, during which he also composed his first two symphonies, several sets of piano music, lieder, chamber music and his famed Violin Concerto in D major.

However, few people may realize that in addition to being one of the greatest composers of music across a wide array of genres and instruments, Brahms was first and foremost an accomplished concert pianist. The work itself seems to be a dissertation of sorts on the composer’s skill and talent as a pianist-composer, and is fittingly dedicated to his teacher Eduard Marxsen. Therefore, it should be no surprise that his second piano concerto premiered in 1881 with Brahms himself as the soloist. The work proved to be a major success, and Brahms would begin touring the rest of Europe with the work, which served to further sculpt his reputation as one of the finest musicians on the continent.

Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 is truly a model synthesis of old forms and “sturm und drang” expressionism. Brahms’ almost obsessive adherence to the absolute musical forms of Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert is readily apparent in the structure of the work as a whole. Moreover, the scope of the work—the performance of which could last up to and hour—continues to push the boundaries of absolute music in a way that prefigures the works of the grand symphonic composers Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. However, future concertos for piano could rarely emulate Brahms’ in terms of length, the strength of its musical ideas and overall structural cohesiveness.

Grade: A

Best Recording: Vladimir Horowitz (CBS/1969)

Why?: Throughout his career, Vladimir Horowitz always had an extremely close affinity with the works of Robert Schumann. Some of his best known recordings are, in fact, of Schumann’s set of 13 small pieces called Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), which was programmed regularly for Horowitz’s concerts and recitals. One piece from the set, “Träumerei” (“Dreaming”), was one of the pianist’s most famous and oft-performed encores.

In contrast to Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana is a different beast altogether. Where the former attempts to showcase the gentle musical psyche of a child, the latter is an expression of the manic polarities of emotion experienced by an adult. Moreover, because of the work’s emotional intensity and musical complexity, few pianists have had the necessary mindset and patience to perform the work satisfactorily.

Vladimir Horowitz’s celebrated 1969 recording of Kreisleriana not only won the coveted Prix Mondial du Disque in Montreux, Switzerland, but still stands as the most definitive recording of Schumann’s eight movement work in history.

The key to Horowitz’s success with this performance is an extreme sense of clarity in his playing that would begin its steady decline in the years following this recording. Horowitz had, only a few years prior, returned to the stage with a performance at Carnegie Hall after suffering for over a decade with crippling depression. He would leave the stage once more immediately following this recording for another four years.

Horowitz, like Schumann, struggled with a varied and troubling set of personal demons. However, where the root of Schumann’s psychic troubles is very much left to conjecture, it is almost certain that Horowitz’s long bouts with depression had to do with his inability to “cure” himself of his homosexuality. Horowitz’s sexual orientation was well-known and accepted by his peers, but as evidenced by the pianist’s repeated attempts to reform his sexuality through dangerous psychiatric methods (and an unhealthy amount of drugs), Horowitz himself could never come to terms with the truth of his sexual identity.

Despite these tragic issues in Horowitz’s personal life, it was during the period of 1965-1969 that the pianist had achieved optimal lucidity and strength of purpose, and many of his most celebrated recordings and live performances occurred during this 4 year time frame. Where Horowitz had once let his sublimated sexual energies take control of himself and his playing, it was during this time that he was finally able to harness them into some of the best musical performances the world has ever known. One could relate this period in Horowitz’s life to that of Robert Schumann, who composed Kreisleriana and several other masterpieces during the time in which he was at his most anchored in reality—namely the long legal battle he held with Friedrich Wieck for custody of (and later marriage to) his underage daughter Clara.

Thus, while many of Horowitz’s recordings are often flagrantly Dionysian in their excitement and sentimentality, this recording of Kreisleriana molds a finely crafted structure to house the primal energies he needed to pour into it. His playing shows a keen understanding of Schumann’s work in a formal and psychological sense—and the clarity, strength of tone, and forward-moving momentum that ensues is nothing short of miraculous. 

(Source: Spotify)

Almost by default, one is tempted to consider a composer’s creative output for solo instrument as being inferior to works they have written for large ensembles. However, as is the case with many composers who started out their careers as instrumentalists, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Such is the case with Robert Schumann, whose eight movement suite inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s overly sensitive literary character and alter-ego, Johannes Kreisler, stands as one of his greatest works and a key milestone in the progress of German Romanticism.

Schumann had a great love for German literature, instilled mostly by his novelist and publisher father August Schumann. However, of the major German literary figures of the late-18th and early-19th centuries, E.T.A. Hoffmann was perhaps the author with whom Schumann most closely related.

Hoffmann himself was a music critic and composer, but found that his talents for music was best subordinated to his talents as a writer. Johannes Kreisler was a recurring character in several of the author’s novels, as well as his articles and essays—most famously in Hoffmann’s series of articles on the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. This practice of using a fictional character (or characters) journalistically in the place of the author’s own voice was a technique Schumann would use in his own writings on music.

Schumann’s Kreisleriana is believed to be influenced by Hoffmann’s journalism under the guise of Kreisler as well as his novel Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr. However, the piece is less influenced by Hoffmann’s anti-hero as much as how closely Schumann himself related to the character. Like Hoffmann, Schumann is conjuring the musical voice of the emotionally troubled Johannes Kreisler in the place of his own, similarly to how he uses the figures of Eusebius and Florestan in his writings on music.

That said, it’s important to also understand that one musical theme unites the work as a whole. It is the musical signature of his soon-to-be wife, Clara Wieck, and appears in all but one movement—the 7th, which is perhaps Schumann/Kreisler at his most diabolical.

Overall, I feel that Kreisleriana is Schumann composing at his creative and rational peak, carrying forward much of this energy immediately afterwards to his next composition, the Fantasie in C Major. This period in Schumann’s life was wrought by an intense legal battle over obtaining ward over Clara Wieck from her father (and Schumann’s past piano instructor) Friedrich Wieck. It was perhaps a time when Schumann was at his most lucid. Though even lucidity has some draw backs. In this case, the music often rambles and gets repetitive—other works by Schumann maintain the listener’s interest more successfully. Moreover, this lucidity was perhaps acquired through a new-found strength of purpose spurred on by what we might now call an unhealthy relationship with a minor.

Despite its flaws and dubious origins, Kreisleriana is an incredibly skilled and masterful grouping of disparate emotions that Schumann used to express himself musically to a lover where he could not verbally or physically. In a sense, Kreisleriana is the first significant example of music as literature. Moreover, the influence this piece had upon future composers (of developing nationalist musical traditions; again, mostly thanks to Brahms) is readily apparent. For example, one hears the growing passion of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music in sixth movement and the Norwegian lyricism of Edvard Grieg in the fifth.

Grade: A

Few composers throughout the history of Western Classical Music have been more polarizing than Robert Schumann. As the fourth in what would become a long line great German Romanticists in music (the first three major examples being Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn), Schumann’s renown in Europe was perhaps stunted by the rise of the ever-popular Bohemians in Paris, and to a lesser extent, the international travels and performances of Felix Mendelssohn. Yet despite Schumann’s short and rather tragic life, some would label his music as a revelation and base point for the rise of conservative musicians in the German Romantic tradition (and later, the various nationalist musical traditions throughout Europe and Russia). Others, however, might cast the rather prolific composer as a gifted amateur, whose compositions would have faded into obscurity if it weren’t for the efforts of his wife and concert pianist, Clara Schumann, and of course, his protégé Johannes Brahms.

Schumann’s dreams of becoming a great performing musician were more or less shattered by two traumatic events in his early life. The first was the death of his father August Schumann when the young Robert was only 16. August had encouraged the boy’s interest in music and literature as he himself was somewhat of a major figure among the German literati. His untimely death led the young man to dash his hopes of becoming a career musician and turn to the study of law—perhaps due the Schumann family’s more practical needs for a steady income.

The second unfortunate event in Schumann’s early career that all but guaranteed his inability to perform as a career pianist was a self-inflicted injury to his right hand in his early-20s. At the time, he had been taking piano lessons with respected pedagogue and his future father-in-law, Frederich Wieck (father of Clara Wieck Schumann). While there is no universal consensus as to how he was injured, legend has it that Schumann invented a mechanical device for exercising his right hand, which then led to a catastrophic injury due to repetitive stress. As a result, Schumann began devoting his energies completely to composing music—mostly for the piano.

It was also during this time that Schumann became increasingly troubled, mentally and otherwise. He often turned to binge drinking and cavorting with others late into the night. Schumann also began almost obsessively courting Clara Wieck, the teenage daughter of his piano teacher, who was thrust into the middle of a brutal war of wills waged between the young Schumann and Frederich Wieck over her custody. The latter would, under no circumstances, allow his daughter to marry Schumann due to the composer’s flagrantly irresponsible nature and financial destitution. What followed was a horrible legal battle that Schumann would ultimately pull through as the victor (due to waiting for Clara to reach the legal age of consent—she was 10 years his junior), shortly taking her hand in marriage shortly thereafter. They later reconciled with Wieck when his grandchildren were born.

Schumann, in addition to being a musician and composer, was perhaps best known throughout Europe as a music critic. His journal, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, proved to bring a great deal of exposure to both Frédéric Chopin and the then-unknown Brahms in Germany—both of whom he proclaimed as geniuses of the highest caliber. After his tenure of about 10 years as editor of the journal, Schumann resigned to pursue other commitments. The journal however, would infamously fall into the hands of those with anti-Semitic agendas (as exemplified by a young Richard Wagner’s pseudonymous and embarrassingly self-deluded contribution to the journal: “Das Judenthum in der Musik,” or “Jewishness in Music”).

The remaining years of Schumann’s life and career are marked by modest successes as a composer for piano and voice (as separate instruments), as well as by several troubling failures as a composer and conductor for orchestra. However, it was also a period of mental decline, that was perhaps punctuated by his and Clara’s extremely close relationship with the young Johannes Brahms and the subsequent visual and auditory hallucinations that began hindering his ability to function normally. 

Brahms began his friendship with the Schumanns in 1853 when his was only 20 years old. By that time, Schumann had already developed several neuroses, of which certain irrational fears and the belief that the note A5 was sounding in his ear constantly plagued him. Brahms stayed with the Schumanns for several weeks following his visit to their home in Düsseldorf with a letter of introduction from the great violinist and mutual friend Joseph Joachim. It was also during this time that Brahms would begin his famously passionate, though apparently platonic relationship with Clara Schumann.

During these last three years of his life, Schumann became more and more troubled by hallucinations, auditory and otherwise, of both the angelic and diabolic sort. In 1854, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine. He was rescued and interred at a mental institution where he lived out the rest of his life with little to no contact with his family and friends.

There is much conjecture as to what caused Schumann’s catastrophic mental illness. Some posit that he had contracted syphilis during his wild days as a young man. Others posit that the composer suffered from a bi-polar disorder, which eventually degraded into a form of schizophrenic psychosis. Others, still, claim that the composer’s latent homosexuality led to his breakdown in the early-1850s, and while there is epistolary evidence that Schumann was no stranger to same-sex love (if only on a platonic level), little evidence suggests that he was, in fact, struggling with his sexual identity.

In the end, I have no other option but to agree with those who hold Robert Schumann in high regard as one of the most pivotal composers in the German Romantic tradition. Despite the distaste many had/have for its unrestrained sentimentality and extreme polarities, Schumann’s music set new standards in the realm of expression, both formally and performatively. Moreover, while much of his music lacks the radical genius of some of his peers, Schumann’s role as one of Europe’s greatest music critics combined with an exceptionally prolific collection of fine music leads me to conclude that Western music may have progressed in an radically different way without his involvement. 

Best Live Recording: Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky (EMI/2005)

Why?: Having only recently come across this recording, I had previously believed that Yo Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax’s recording of the Cello Sonata was the best around, and while it still is in many respects, this live recording of Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky at the 2005 Lugano Music Festival has easily beat the former as my all-time favorite recording of the work.

What this performance has that the Ma/Ax reading lacks is an almost overindulgent sense of virtuosity and passion that breathes new life into the work, in my opinion. Argerich’s careful dedication to tone production, as well as her amazing virtuoistic skill brings the sonata into the realm of Rachmaninoff’s concertos in terms of the sheer force and power of this performance.

As is usually the case with Argerich’s live performances, the playing can tend to get a bit fast, and certain cadences could benefit from taking the speed down a notch—one could tell that even Maisky has a bit of trouble keeping up with the tempo in certain spots. The one place where this no-holds-barred speed really works is in the final movement, which basically becomes a whirlwind dance in the Mephistophelian sense. Overall, never have I heard a more exciting and powerful interpretation of this particular work as this one by Argerich and Maisky in Lugano—truly a shame I missed seeing it performed live.

(Source: Spotify)