Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Arabesque en do majeur, op. 18
Fantaisie en do mineur, op. 17
"Papillons", op. 2
"Carnaval de Vienne", op. 26

Joseph Tong, piano

In the suite of twelve miniatures published as Papillons in April 1832, Schumann paid simultaneous tribute to his two idols, Jean-Paul (alias Johann Paul Richter) and Franz Schubert. Fantasie in C major – arguably Schumann’s piano masterpiece – we move forward to the summer of 1836, when Robert and Clara were forbidden by her implacable father to meet or correspond. That June Schumann sublimated his despair at their enforced separation in a movement titled Ruines. Fantaisie…. In the autumn he added two more movements, Trophies and Palms, to create what he termed a "Grand Sonata for the Pianoforte for Beethoven’s Monument"… – a reference to Liszt’s project to raise funds for a Beethoven monument in Bonn. Revising the music for publication in 1838 – by which time he and Clara were secretly engaged – Schumann wrote to her that "the first movement is more impassioned than anything I have ever written – a deep lament for you". Resorting, not for the only time, to nineteenth-century sexual stereotyping, Schumann described the Arabeske and the contemporary Blumenstück as "delicate – suitable for ladies". Both pieces seem to have been written as a riposte to criticisms, not least from Clara, that his piano music was too abstruse and demanding – "sheer revellings in strangeness", as one critic put it. Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Jest from Vienna) is in effect an eccentric – and pianistically challenging – five-movement sonata in B flat. Indeed, Schumann variously dubbed it‘a grand Romantic sonata and a romantic showpiece.