Classical Music | Clarinet Music

Recorded on 10/30/2019, uploaded on 04/02/2020

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

I.  Zart und mit Ausdruck

II.  Lebhaft, leicht

III.  Rasch und mit Feuer

Schumann penned his Fantasiestüke, Op. 73 over just two days in February 1849, and their mercurial spirit bespeaks the dueling personas of Florestan and Eusebius, the composer’s imaginary characters — impetuous and sensitive, respectively — that inhabit so much of his music. The set comes across as three “songs without words,” written in stream of consciousness: the first is searching and plaintive, the middle movement untroubled with a tinge of nostalgia at the end, and the last animated and hesitating, though all three share a certain obsessive, circular quality. In each movement, the coda feels especially magical — a sort of winking last word that seems to set aside whatever disjunction preceded it.    Notes by Graeme Steele Johnson

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.