Catalogue Connection: 25753

Received wisdom is anathema to Burkard Schliessmann. Here, on his most recent release, ‘Fantasies’, he explores Schumann’s unique internal landscape, piling interpretative revelation upon revelation in the process. Here is a pianist in the lineage of the great Romantics: he has worked with Shura Cherkassky, Bruno Leonardo Gelber and Poldi Mildner (a pupil of Rachmaninov and Schnabel); he appears as torch-bearer of that tradition, fine instincts couched within a deep musical intellect and captured via the finest available recording techniques; a studio audience recreates the ambience of live performance.

For this remarkable project on Divine Art Records, a remarkable instrument was required: a Steinway (D-612236), provided by Daniel Brech and equipped with two keyboards complete with mechanics and hammers (one bright, one dark). The recording process, too, is state-of-the-art: recording producer Julian Schwenkner, alongside recording engineer Jupp Wegner, worked at Teldex Studio in Berlin with 14 microphones (including Coles 4038 and Royer R121 ribbon mics plus Neumann M49 tube mics) for a Dolby Atmos-compatible result. This generates the ideal sonic experience, the truest replication of Schliessmann’s rich sound. There is just a crystal-clear link between player and composer.

The approach here is that of an exposition and exploration of phantasmagoria: the aspect of Schumann’s output that speaks to the realms of illusion, and of its relation to reality. Schliessmann sees this particularly reflected in ideas of twilight, referencing Liederkreis (Op 24 No 3, specifically), and how illusion is – magically – created there. ‘Schumann’s piano output cannot be considered from an isolated point, let alone understood; rather, it is a reflection of his song compositions,’ says Schliessmann.

Revealing Schumann’s penchant for the liminal, then, is foundational here: and nowhere is this more evident than in the late and woefully under-appreciated Gesänge der Frühe (‘Songs of the morning’) that close the set, the last work Schumann himself prepared for publication. Elusive yet magnificent, Schliessmann persuades us, rightly, that this is truly great music.

Schliessmann has a 360-degree approach to Schumann. When the composer writes ‘Innig’, that’s exactly what Schliessmann delivers; he whispers into the listener’s ear. By the same token, the extreme virtuosity of some of the writing (in the Fantasie, most famously, the coda of the second movement) poses no obstacle. Like the greats of Schumann interpretation before him – Yves Nat, Claudio Arrau, Edwin Fischer – Schliessmann has each and every tool required for this mystical journey into Schumann’s soul. The final movement of Kreisleriana is a masterclass: the sustaining of the bass, the crisp right hand, all creating the perfect Schumann ambience.

When it comes to the Fantasie, this is hardly Schliessmann’s first rodeo. Years of complete immersion in this score reveal myriad details in an interpretation that never loses sight of its end goals. The key element here is pedalling, and Schliessmann lets no detail go unnoticed without the slightest touch of blurring. A core of steel runs through the first movement; few, if any performances, capture the spirit of a march so perfectly as Schliessmann in the second movement, the music’s inexorable sweep undeniable. Arguably, though, the jewel in this Fantasie’s crown is the finale: a phantasmagorical exploration of psychic states such as few have dared.

The Arabeske is far more than a palette-cleanser. Ruminative yet light, it acts more as a prolongation of the immense expanses of the Fantasie, as illuminating a re-interpretation as one can find. The close takes us to hitherto unimagined spheres.

Schumann’s first collection, the Fantasiestücke, Op 12, contains one of two pieces to appear twice in Schliessmann’s collection: the first of Op 12, ‘Des Abends’, appears slightly freer in isolation; a second Arabeske flows like a stream. The alternatives remind us of the validity of subtly different approaches, that if we comprehend the inner machinations of this music, there can be equally valid voices. This performance of the Fantasiestückecontains gem after gem: the grandeur of ‘Aufschwung’, the nightmarish elements of ‘In der Nacht’. If the Fantasie, as Schliessmann suggests, links to Wagner’s Tristan, one can find perhaps an echo here in the perfumed harmonies that open ‘Fabel’.

The journey, from the first disc’s kaleidoscopic Kreisleriana to the later works on the final disc, is awe-inspiring. That final disc is a treasure-trove of lesser-known yet deserving Schumann. As well as the Gesänge der Frühe, the Nachtstücke of 1839 exude mysteries that surely speak of later Schumann; even the active third movement (‘Mit grosser Lebhaftigkeit’) speaks of issues profound. Schliessmann treats Schumann’s later works with deepest respect; they are no oddities or the result of mental illness, but intensely personal statements in their own right. The later Fantasiestücke (Op 111) are impassioned: this is ardent playing, intensely involving, and Schliessmann pinpoints the darkness at the music’s centre.

Burkard Schliessmann’s invitation to encounter the core of Schumann presents performances that enrich the soul in a recording that is surely unparalleled.

On three CDs, the pianist Burkard Schliessmann bundles piano pieces by Robert Schumann that can be categorised as ‘fantasy pieces’. As a renowned expert in the music of the German Romantics, Schliessmann’s interpretations open up completely new, surprising and unexpected horizons and lead into fascinating spheres of poetry, tone colours, expression and agogics.

An essay by the pianist in the trilingual booklet provides information about the special interpretation approach under the label ‘Phantasmagorias’. Since the release of the album, the reviews have been overflowing with enthusiasm, and one can only agree with this in every respect.

Schliessmann’s playing is richly coloured and multi-faceted, reflecting every required mood, captivating and with stupendous technique; no detail of Schumann’s scores goes undetected. The pianist plays on an unusual Steinway grand piano (D-612236), which is equipped with two keyboards including action and hammers (one lighter, one darker).

The recording technology in the Teldex Studio in Berlin with 14 microphones is also exceptional. All in all, this album is not only highly recommended, but really a MUST!

Addressing the analysis of this full-bodied and elegant Divine Art box, which presents three SACD with piano works by Robert Schumann in the interpretation of the German pianist Burkard Schliessmann, I can only immediately agree with the Bavarian artist when he states that it is not so much the Schumann piano works, as the compositions for voice and piano that, in their combination of literature and music, contribute to the decisive understanding of this romantic composer and his power of thought regarding the association between poetry, illusion and reality.

On the other hand, Schumann is in music as Gérard de Nerval, Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis are in literature and poetry, as through their work, and also through their life, marked by dramatic and tragic implications, they have tried to replace logical thought, rationalism, with a new form of understanding of the surrounding reality. But there is another statement by Schliessmann, on the other hand, which I do not particularly agree with, when he writes in the rich and abundant notes accompanying the Divine Art box set, that “Anyone who listens carefully to Schumann’s music will recognize this illogical, irrational, almost insane aspect. However, we remain in the realm of common trivialities if we do not specify exactly how it manages to convey this impression to us. We can feel the effects of the methods he uses, maybe they will make a deep feeling resonate in us, but we can’t say we “understoom” them. Therefore, everything in Schumann’s work was “planned” at the highest level. Hence my personal conviction that Schumann was never “sick”, but was always misunderstood. […] Bettina von Arnim also considered Schumann healthy during a visit to Endenich, but the doctor who treated him was sick [as reported by Ernst Burger:Robert Schumann. Schott, Mainz 1999, p. 329]). Of course, an interesting testimony, but one that goes against the theses of those experts and those psychiatrists who instead confirmed, through as many documents and other testimonies, the presence of psychic disorders that finally exploded at the end of 1853 and that led to the suicide attempt by Schumann (among the various contributions, I mention only the particularly interesting one of the German neuropsychiatrist Uwe Henrik Peters, entitled Robert Schumann. 13 Tage bis ENDEnich, in the Italian translation Robert Schumann and the thirteen days before the asylum, published by Spirali, in which he points out how the cures, if we want to define them as such, of the time went to further worsen the fragile psyche of the romantic composer).

But what matters, at least there, is to understand and analyze the choice made by Schliessmann to bring water to his mill, starting from the choice of the piano pages spread in the playlist of the three SACD. In the first disc we find the Kreisleriana, Op. 16, the Fantasia in C major, Op. 17 and the Arabeske, Op. 18, while in the second SACD iFantasiestücke, Op. 12, again the Arabeske, Op. 18 and Des Abends, which is part of the first book of the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, already performed; finally, in the third disc we find iNachtstücke, Op. 23, the Dreistücke, Op. 111 and the Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133. As to say a choice that combines the alpha with the omega of Schumann piano production, in an attempt to provide a homogeneous key, in its progressive line, of the entire path for this instrument by the composer of Zwickau. An undoubtedly homogeneous key, dictated by the lucidity of Schumann’s thought and creativity, which Schliessmann carries on in the name of the fruitful relationship between literature and music undertaken by the brilliant romantic musician.

Not only that, but the Bavarian pianist, always in his accompanying notes, goes to touch and identify those points of contact between authors of romantic literature of Schumann’s time, namely Joseph von Eichendorff, E. T A. Hoffmann and Friedrich Hölderlin, as well as mentioning other “sacred” authors of the Germanic Romantic Pantheon such as Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, with the music of our author. This point of contact is not only about the importance of the choice of those poems then conveyed into the Lieder schumanniani, as happens in the Liederkreis Op. 39, whose twelve pieces deal precisely with as many poems by Eichendorff, but also with how the influence of this poet and other authors was decisive in Schumann’s exclusively piano music, that is, how the poetic word, the verse, the stanza, in the mind of the Zwickau composer, were perpetuated like “musicalized texts” on the piano keyboard. In a sense, through this operation of meta-semantic continuity, Schumann goes beyond Heine’s famous statement, namely that where words end, music begins. On the contrary, Schumannian intellectual and artistic “lucidity” allows him, according to Schliessmann, to unite the two concepts, those of speech and sound, in a continuous perpetuation, to the point of overturning Heine’s statement where the words end, there the music continues. Thus, through his musical reworking through the piano, Schumann does nothing but dilate, expand, exalt the poetic context, transforming it into a “sound metapoesy”. As if to say that, even when he composes music exclusively dedicated to his favorite instrument, Schumann does not stop thinking and imagining like a literate.

For this reason, in his introductory essay to the recordings contained in this box, Schliessmann writes verbatim: “Robert Schumann is considered the main representative of German Romanticism, in particular through his exemplary fusion/combination of literature and music. Where the spoken or written word reaches its limits, music enters with its language and its means. Poetry is elevated to a new level and stage of communication, representation and understanding. Stylistically, Schumann’s piano works belong to a transition period that was inspired by Bach’s polyphony and conditioned by the successors and imitators of Viennese classicism and in particular of Beethoven. The elements of Schumann’s style that make him original and great, and that are uniquely characteristic of him, can be seen in two ways. His compositional inventiveness took him far beyond the known harmonic progressions up to his time; on the other hand, he discovered a romantic principle in the fuges and canons of the previous composers. He saw the counterpoint, with its intertwining of voices, as corresponding to the mysterious relationships between external phenomena and human soul and, being a romantic composer, he found himself pushed to express them in complex musical terms».

I wanted to mention this long period in full, to better understand why the Bavarian pianist, in his choice of the repertoire engraved in these three SACDs, gave extreme importance to the Schumannian concept of Fantasie. This is because precisely in this piano genre, the Zwickau composer found the ideal expressive tool to synthesize the literary field with the exquisitely musical one (I remember that Schliessmann here performs the Fantasia in C major, Op. 17, the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 and the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 111), without forgetting, to further strengthen the “literary” dimension of his pianism, that behind the Kreisleriana op. 16 (whose eight pieces are as many Fantasies), as well as in the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, there is the cumbersome, almost omnipresent, figure of E. T A. Hoffmann And this applies above all to Op. 16, which Schumann composed in just four days in 1838 in a state of feverish restlessness and in the prey of a depressed mood, in which the musical matter collides, through precise harmonic-melodic and timbre choices, with the literary character of Hoffmann, namely the conductor Johannes Kreisler, who progressively plunges into madness, “anticipating in a disturbing way the destiny of Schumann, [and which] symbolizes the combination of biographical, literary and musical that is so characteristic of Romanticism and that we repeatedly encounter in the work of Schumann”.

Nevertheless, even the four Nachtstücke Op. 23, composed in Vienna in March 1839, are based on literary models taken from the narrative work of E. T A. Hoffmann and are connected by their gloomy atmosphere. It is interesting to note how Schumann noted in his diary that he was writing a “body fantasy” (sic!). Not only that, but shortly after composing the first of the four pieces, a real funeral march, Schumann learned of the death of his brother Eduard from Zwickau and commented verbatim: “How strange my premonitions are; I also realize the farewell to Eduard and how good he was still”.

The wonderful Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133 are the last work that Schumann himself prepared for the press and anticipate by very little what happened on February 24, 1854, that is, when he threw himself into the icy waters of the Rhine in an attempt to embrace death. The genetic fulcrum of this masterpiece is given by the poetry of Hölderlin and the figure of Diotima, so much so that the manuscript of the Gesänge der Frühe is entitled A Diotima, to which the Zwickau composer wanted to proxt his psychic dimension of that moment (the two gloomy final verses of the poem An Diotima (Your sun, the most beautiful time, has set/And in the icy night now fight hurricanes must have had a gloomy foremonitory meaning for Schumann), even if later in the printed version the dedication to Diotima was replaced in favor of the poet Bettina von Arnim, who was Then among the very few people who went to visit Schumann, exactly in May 1855, during his imprisonment in the mental health home in Endenich.

In one of his most famous novels, The Succombent, the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard makes the protagonist pronounce that Glenn Gould had been among the pianists of the twentieth century the “most lucid of the fools” and in a certain sense also the general approach of the reading made by Burkhard Schliessmann for his Schumann makes use of this expression. For the Bavarian pianist, performing the works of the Zwickau composer means giving a logical, clear, precise form to an expressive matter to say the least heart-steating in its unstable and humorous complexity. On the other hand, we must not forget how behind Schumann there is always the shadow of Bach, to whom the romantic musician turns incessantly to govern his passionate and desperate eloque. In the same way, Schliessmann addresses the performance of the Kreisleriana, in which the rhythmic sense, through an agogic application that often becomes convulsive, tends to discipline the sinking dimension of the whole composition, that “descending into the mute gurgo”, through the armor given by the squaring of the circle, because the form, even for the most romantic of romantics, cannot and must not be disregarded.

It is obvious that, with these premises, the interpretation of the Fantasy in C major for Schliessmann becomes the “programme manifesto” of his conception of Schumann. The “madness” at the service of a lucidity that goes to the point of actually anticipating the famous Wagnerian Tristan-Akkord marked by a suspended agreement at the end of the C major tonay that begins the first half Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen, even if the general arcata that the Bavarian artist packages throughout this page is equally distributed in the exaltation of the second and third half, long considered “weaker” than the harmonious overflow of the first half. Reflection and audacity, transport and shrinkage, breath that ends in hyperventilation, but always with a sound, an eminently elegant timbre, even “classic”, steeped in nobility, otherworldly detachment, as can be seen in the incipit of the second half.

The delicacy, the prudence, even a poorly concealed tenderness represent the DNA that Schliessmann confers on his reading of the Arabeske, and his slowing down on clouds of suspension make this page turn in the meanders of a dream world, as if the listener more than listening saw the progressive unrunraving of the sound material. Note how the Bavarian artist wanted to re-present in the second SACD another execution of the same Op. 18, offering an even more diaphanous, more intimate, more dreamy reading in its essence, as if to want to reiterate that Schumannian music incessantly tends to change, to change in its peculiarities because of its perennial humoral scent.

Through the interpretation of the Fantasiestücke Op. 12 Burkard Schliessmann penetrates the meanders of the fairy tale, in which the first of the eight pieces of the collection, Des Abends, represents the front door. And even in the most urgent moments, such as the Aufschwung, there is always a patina of obvious unreality in his pianoism, in which dreamlike, phantsmagoric, illusory scents feed the musical material. But this continuous call to irrationality, to the fantastic connotation are rendered by the Bavarian pianist through a perfectly dominated form, with clearly marked lines, thick enough to retain colors and shades. And the same goes for those songs, such as Grillen and the concluding Ende von Lied, in which the humorous brushstrokes are rendered with a childish (in the Schumannian sense of the term, of course) enthusiasm that makes itself palpable, hectic (and this thanks to a wise use of the pedalboard).

Between the eight Fantasiestücke of Op. 12 and the three of Op. 111 there are fourteen years apart but, from a certain point of view, the tempera, the genuine naivety and a youthful sedimentation nestled in the soul of their author present in both collections, do not make them warn in the least. And Schliessmann returns with due freshness, with that magical restlessness as we also nest in Op. 111, without forgetting a stamp that becomes vaporous in those moments of pause, of sudden reflection, as well as the inevitable temporal layer that, willy-nor-nain, settles in our lives.

The discipline of the gesture, its rigor then shine through in the Nachtstücke, in which the magisterio of the past, of the greats of the past (Bach on all) is highlighted with wisdom and participation, also thanks to a timbre dosage that is a lesson in style; this also involves the contrapuntal contribution, the polyphonic construction that snows perfectly in the arch (I think of the second passage, the Markiert undviv). Of course, apparently there would be to wonder what could be “nocturnal” in these four pieces, all in a major tonality, but in reality here Schumann (and in parallel Schliessmann) make us understand how the night hours for the poet, for the musician, for both, can be harbingers of “productivity”, of intellectual articulation, of creative fervor.

Obviously, the Bavarian pianist could not have concluded this excursus in Schumann’s “crazy lucidity” if not with the extraordinary Gesänge der Frühe, an exemplary essay of the last pianism of the genius of Zwickau, where modernity, the future of pianism are diluted in a classic rigor, so as to ideally “fit” the five pieces that make up the cycle, but that at the same time transform this pianistic masterpiece into a real interpretative puzzle because of its multiple harmonic facets that incessantly change the exhibition construct. And here Schliessmann is at least “Olympic”, capable of bridling, of untying the roughness and knots that under his fingers always come to the comb, decoding the changes with an agogy that is exquisitely elastic, flexible, changing. All this without sacrificing expressiveness, the cry of pain that rises mutely and to which Schumann entrusts his last heart break, before his absolute lucidity, the one that belongs only to the brilliant fools, hands him over to the pilly of Endenich.

From a technical point of view, the recording of these three SACDs represents a real undertaking, starting with the choice of the instrument, an extraordinary Steinway D-612236, alternately equipped with two keyboards, each with different sounds, sounds and intonations. One keyboard produced a bright and bright sound, while the other produced a warm and dark sound. Recording producer Julian Schwenkner, along with sound engineer Jupp Wegner, used cutting-edge technology, using fourteen microphones (including Coles 4038 and Royer R121 tape microphones, as well as legendary Neumann M49 valve microphones) to offer a Dolby Atmos experience made at Teldex Studios in Berlin. Thus, the technical setting and the equipment were fundamental to capture the complexities of Schumann’s compositions during the recording process. Those who have a quality listening system, will not be able to fail to appreciate the remarkable speed demonstrated by the dynamics but, at the same time, also the naturalness that it manages to release, until returning the most subdued nuances, as well as the difference in sound manifested by the alternating use of the two keyboards. The parameter of the sound stage manages to render the image of the instrument in the studio environment, not only lowering it in its amplitude, but making it clearly perceive the space that is around the piano, which, also because of the sophisticated microphone, turns out to be close, without compromising the irradiation of the sound, which correctly and beautifully fills the entire listening environment, therefore well beyond the presence of the speakers. The perfect microphone then went on to manage the way to say the least optimal the tonal balance, with the possibility of always discerning, including the passages in fff and ppp, the medium-acute and the low register, which in Schumann’s piano music is of fundamental importance, with absolute attention to the relative discounts. Finally, the detail, whose tactile element reaches truly audiophile levels, with a physical perception of the piano of great impact, so a three-dimensional dimension of the instrument is clearly felt, in addition to allowing a listening that never knows fatigue, a very important aspect this, if you take into account that overall we exceed two and a half hours of listening.

Mr Schliessmann’s recordings have usually found favor with our reviewers, though of his Chopin, Mr Harrington remarked that slower tempos for the Preludes, Ballade 2, and Scherzo 3 prevented the performances from being “faster and more fiery” (Mar/Apr 2016). This release collects a number of Schumann works, some less played than others. 

As most people probably know, Schumann is one of my favorite composers—I like him because his approach to musical form is so novel. Within the easily recognized forms of his music (often ternary or rondo), he inserts phrases that seem not to fit: one might liken them to asides, sudden memories of past things, or even occasional stream-of-consciousness. Schliessmann recognizes this and capitalizes on it in all the performances. He often emphasizes the grand sweep of the large form of the music over a scrupulous concern about the note- to-note connections. To be sure, some of the tempos are slower (for instance, the opening gesture of `Soaring’ and most of `Whims’ in the Fantasy Pieces), but that often aids in revealing the complex texture of the music. The singing tone for which he has always been praised is intact—so important for a composer who used melody in such interesting ways. And he includes marvelous accounts of the Night Pieces and the Songs of the Morning, which many pianists avoid in favor of the more familiar works. 

One final, interesting fact: Schliessmann used two different keyboards for the Steinway D he performs on: the first results in a very bright tone, while the second is more intimate and warm. The keyboards, in turn, dictate different interpretive choices, readily on display in the two different recordings of the Arabeske. 

The sound is perfect; the recording engineers took great care to place a number of microphones in various points around the piano, resulting in one of the most beautiful-sounding recordings I’ve heard recently. 

In sum, this is a fascinating account of Schumann piano works well-known and not, and worth adding to a collection of recordings from other artists. 

Robert Schumann, in his all too short and troubled life, managed to compose a significant amount of truly great piano music. Most of it is comprised of collections of short pieces. Some of these are thematically related, others were composed together, and nearly all had either titles or creative tempo markings. A good example of his creative process can be found in a letter to Clara, where he wrote “I’ve finished another whole notebook of new pieces. I intend to call it Kreisleriana. You and one of your ideas play the main role in it.” Subtitled Fantasien für Piano-Forte, they serve as the opening work in this huge program from Burkard Schliessmann. He gives the program a simple title of Fantasies and includes almost every major opus by Schumann that uses or is related to the term “Fantasy.” They were written in two timeframes: the early works in 1836–39 and the later ones in 1851–53. 

All of these works here require a quite advanced level of pianism. Schumann started his musical life with the goal of becoming a virtuoso and his early pieces especially are quite difficult. Due to problems with his hand, he abandoned his own concert career and seemed quite satisfied that Clara Wieck would champion his music and was likely a better pianist, even before they got married in 1840. She would outlive him by 40 years and edited, published, and frequently performed his entire oeuvre. She is probably the one most responsible for his music being appreciated today as a foundation of the piano repertoire. 

Most of the music here has been an integral part of Schliessmann’s repertoire for the better part of his career, and he has recorded a few pieces like Kreisleriana and the Fantasie before. Clearly he has much more to say about Schumann. He even gives us two different performances of the Arabeske and a second one of Des Abends, the first of the op. 12 Fantasiestücke. As with his other recordings, Schliessmann contributes an extensive, thought-provoking essay. He makes considerable references to poetry and Schumann’s songs as they relate to his piano music, as well as each of the specific pieces here. 

Without hesitation I recommend this recording, not only for those who value great and probing performances of Romantic piano music, but also for anyone with a love for great music from any era or instrumentation. The Fantasie, op. 17 is the largest work on the program and arguably Schumann’s greatest piano piece. Its difficulties are renowned, especially the middle movement. This performance is, in general, more lyrical and passionate than most. There is no sense of showing off in the big contrary-motion leaps, but of shaping and phrasing the top melody over a firm bass line. A high point of the three CDs is the bass line in the final movement. I have never heard it as both the foundation and a beautiful melodic line. It is a revelation. There are many, many moments all through these pieces that repay careful listenings. This will certainly be my reference recording for all of the works here. 

Divine Arts gives us its expected state-of-the-art recording: SACDs in customarily excellent recorded piano sound. Producer Julian Schwenkner and engineer Jupp Wegner worked with Schliessmann, employing 14 microphones for a Dolby Atmos experience. Every nuance of the performances is captured with a clarity that could only be matched by being present in the recording studio.

It becomes obvious from pianist Burkard Schliessmann’s extensive liner notes and the nature of his selections that he regards Robert Schumann as a major Romantic figure; but more, Schumann emerges as a visionary, inspired purveyor of a literary-musical nexus that embraces a huge fund of cultural invention. Schliessmann addresses the mystical element in Schumann’s idiosyncratic synthesis of music and literature, which in a manner indebted to Schubert and Beethoven, explores aspects of Nature, mortality, and love, moving freely and passionately in decisive gestures. Without invoking the names of poets Coleridge and Poe, nor the contemporary musician Berlioz, Schliessmann raises the deliberate ambiguities, harmonic and structural, in Schumann’s oeuvre that invoke the darker hues of imaginative expression.  The lure of the irrational, which Schliessmann cites in Nerval, Lamb, and Hölderlin, finds parallels in Poe’s “imp of the perverse” and in Coleridge’s “esemplastic” notion of the Imagination, capable of the same, infinite varieties of creation attributed to God. Schliessmann’s realizations of the Schumann scores, therefore, bear the agogic and polyphonic textures that invoke menace and uncertainty, even while an otherwise placid surface presents itself, as in the familiar Arabeske in C. Like his contemporaries Liszt and Chopin, and the later Wagner, Schumann will dwell in sudden ecstasies of emotion, heavenly and infernal, as his volatile, often Manichéan, temperament permits. 

The allure of what might be termed “divine madness” begins with Schumann’s eight-section Op. 16 Kreisleriana of 1838, based on his reading of E.T.A. Hoffmann.The opening flourish, doubtless a series of whirling violin figures to invoke the devilry in Kreisler or that of Paganini, invokes what Schliessmann conceives as “twilight” gestures meant to realize a moral miasma. Recall the “disastrous twilight” Milton employs in his early depiction of the fallen Lucifer. The contradictions Schumann embraces involve an objective series centered in B-flat and the extreme, abstract subjectivity or innigkeit, of self-aggrandizement, the basis of most of Scriabin. Already in the Intermezzo appear those sudden rushes of emotion that threaten dissolution, except for their polyphony, which exert a yearning for comprehension. 

For Schumann, time and space have become measurements of longing. To combat merciless Time, Schumann resorts to Märchen, martial impulses that are the stuff of legend, a mode essential to the Schumann sensibility, especially, Schliessmann’s purposes, in the Op. 17 Fantasie. “In the style of a Legend,” the latter part of the Fantasie’s first movement, provokes us to ask, what or whose legend? The answer must lie in the assertion of selfhood, so we look beyond Florestan both to Wagner and Nietzsche, thinkers who posit the mythos of one’s own being. How else to combat the cold, grievous canter of the death-ride of Kreisleriana’s final section, reminiscent of those Medieval woodcuts that no less inspired the second movement of the Mahler G Major Symphony?  Fantasie in C, in which the secret of the cosmos, of universal harmony, is distilled into a single tone, understood by a receptive, enlightened soul. Dedicated to Liszt and conceived in the shadow of Beethoven, the work alternates huge gestures and tiny, even playful, personal mottos and musical anagrams. The later “Tristan chord” having been subsumed into the mix, the music urges the nexus of love and death, given Schumann’s grievous passion for Clara Wieck. The second movement rages at first, percussive in the manner of Beethoven’s Op. 101 A Major Sonata, the syncopations in martial array an assertion of personal power. The last movement Schliessmann takes at a deliberately slow tempo, paying debts to another sonata quasi fantasia in Beethoven’s “Moonlight.” But how much of the opening sequence belongs to Schubert! The great lyric composer perpetually celebrates and laments the sense of loss, and Schumann’s emergent melody resonates as a sustained hymn in the Schubert mode. The intensity and passion only increase, virtually collapsing into a sustained, then subdued, orison. 

Schliessmann steps back in time for Schumann’s 1837 suite after E.T.A. Hoffmann, the eight Fantasiestücke, Op. 12. The programmatic titles offer an opportunity to commune with Schumann on the metaphorical level, since the composer appeals to Nature and the Cosmos for solace and justification. “Des Abends,” which Schliessmann performs twice, presents a drooping, seductive melodic line, captured immortally for my taste by Benno Moiseiwitsch and no less sensitive here in Schliessmann’s rendering. A more strident, hard patina emerges in “Aufschung,” as well it might, as the line soars in a gesture of (Florestan’s) assertiveness. “Warum?” asks an existential question in dialogue, the answer to which may lie in Beethoven’s “It must be!” from Op. 135. A moment of relative mirth in “Grillen” enjoys a songful secondary subject that soon gallops in fairy-tale narrative. But the ensuing “In der Nacht” counters with what suffices as Schumann’s most vehement, Lisztian foray, a rival to many of the more somber Chopin études. The swirling tropes, akin to Poe’s “Descent into the Maelstrom,” find a more agreeable tenor in the penultimate “Traumes Wirren,” a suggestion of Romantic, imaginative intoxication, immortalized in blazing speed by Horowitz, but here rendered in a more staid, controlled ecstasy. “Fabel” begs the question of whose myth evolves before us, and Nietzsche would claim the legend of the defined self. The piece opens quizzically but gathers syncopated speed and confidence, a sense of play, of the “glass bead game,” to paraphrase Hesse. A feeling of farewell opens the finale, Ende vom Lied, at first a stolid march but transforming its cadential tread into a hearty affirmation of conviction in the power of the enchantment of the poetic will. 

Schliessmann performs the familiar Arabeske in C of 1839 in two versions, the second a mite brisker than the first. A rondo with two minor key episodes, the piece embodies what I like to call Schumann’s “nostalgia for the dream” of idyllic bliss. That reverie is not without its dark hues and moments of meandering introspection. The recording from Berlin’s Teldex Studios, utilizing the Dolby Atmos process, has done Schliessmann’s keyboard good service.

The innate morbidity in Schumann’s soul informs his 1839 set of Vier Nachtstücke Op. 23, somber testimony to E.T.A. Hoffmann and to the death of a beloved brother, Eduard. A kind of ineluctable tread permeates the first number, followed by a feeling of contrapuntal rebellion in the second. The heroic impulse defines the third, although its syncopes and middle section betray unease. The last of the set proves the most overtly funereal, exerting a kind of kinship with John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.” Schliessmann delivers a forceful tour of these disturbed visions, not so poetic as that of Emil Gilels but eminently thoughtful. 

The triptych of 1851, Drei Fantasiestücke Op. 111, has had few acolytes, but among them Grant Johannesen and Shura Cherkassky. Clara Schumann called the three pieces “grave and passionate,” and Schliessmann accords them a solemn dignity. The designation Attacca unites the three mood pieces in terms of flux and melodic fluidity. The middle piece appears as an oasis in the midst of a broil traceable both to Shakespeare via E.T.A. Hoffmann and, possibly, to Schumann’s admiration for the Beethoven Op. 111Sonata in C Minor.  The last chord of this third, impressive fantasy-march, resonates long after the double bar. 

Schliessmann concludes his grand tour of the Schumann ethos with the 1854 Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133, literally “Songs Before Morning.” These are five pieces, of which the third in A major forms a kind of crux or fulcrum, and all betray the manic urge to cyclicism that occupies Schumann’s late style, exemplified in the concertos for cello and violin. The thick textures for the keyboard, often in the four-part counterpoint of Bach and Handel, adds an antique dimension to the affekt. Valedictory bell tones infiltrate the last of the set, countered by lovely, liquid riffs. Come, sweet death – “Komm, süßerTod, komm selge Ruh” – isn’t that the most universal of all composers, J.S. Bach? 

Highly recommended, both to read and to audition.

Within five months of the release of his live album Live & Encores, which was also released on the Divine Art label, Burkard Schliessmann presents Robert Schumann: Fantasies, an extensive recording of Schumann’s Phantasmagoria for piano. On three SACDs there are recordings of the Fantasy Pieces op. 12, the Kreisleriana op. 16, the Fantasy in C major op. 17, the Arabesque op. 18, the Night Pieces op. 23 as well as the Three Fantasy Pieces op. 111 and the Songs the early op. 133.

It is not only the proximity of the releases of the two albums that gives them the character of a double pack, but also the fact that both albums contain Schumann’s Fantasy in C major and the third number of the Fantasy Pieces op. 12, “Why?” include. Live & Encores and Fantasies very impressively show Burkard Schliessmann’s playing in completely different situations: Live & Encores was recorded live in front of an audience in the Fazioli concert hall in Milan on three consecutive evenings in April 2023, so that only three takes were required for the final editing for each piece templates. Here Schliessmann plays a Fazioli F278. Fantasies, on the other hand, was recorded in Berlin’s teldex studios from the end of August to the beginning of September 2023. Here Schliessmann plays a D-274 from Steinway & Sons and uses two different tuners. While Live & Encores conveys the “immediate and spontaneous impression” (according to Burkard Schliessmann in an email to the author) of the music in the live situation, the feeling of the artist communicating with the audience and the mutual exchange of tension can be experienced the situation in the studio is different. Under the right conditions, “the matter can be brought to the heart of the matter” (Schliessmann). In addition to the acoustic conditions of the studio, this also includes the instrument, the technical equipment and the collaboration with the producer.

In the present case, all conditions come together optimally. Burkard Schliessmann’s interpretive flair, his intellectual penetration of Schumann’s musical text and his perfect technique come into their own in the acoustic conditions of the studio and in the hands of his producer Julian Schwenkner. The total of fourteen microphones that capture Schliessmann’s playing on the excellent Steinway & Sons in Dolby Atmos ensure a Schumann recording that is nothing more and nothing less than a milestone.

Robert Schumann’s poetic phantasmagoria place the highest intellectual, interpretative and technical demands on the pianist. It is always worth remembering the connections between poetry, fantasy and reality in Schumann’s world of thought. Reading Schliessmann’s essay “Robert Schumann’s Phantasmagoria”, which forms the core of the album’s detailed liner notes, is highly recommended. It says that in literature, authors such as Gérard de Nerval, Hölderlin and Charles Lamb tried to “place a new form of understanding in the place of logical thinking, rationalism”. Schumann is the “representative of this school in music” and the attentive listener will feel “this illogical, irrational, almost crazy aspect” of Schumann’s music.

But this is only one side of Schumann’s piano music. The other is structural, architectural. Elsewhere in the liner notes, Burkard Schliessmann highlights the importance for Schumann of the polyphonic music of older masters, in which Schumann recognized a romantic principle, namely the expression of the “mysterious relationships between souls and things” in the interweaving of voices in contrapuntal music. Burkard Schliessmann succeeds in making both audible and tangible – the poetic, mysterious and fantastic aspects as well as the formal, structural aspects – in an exemplary manner in this recording.

It begins with the Kreisleriana, eight movements that Schumann wrote within a few days in 1838, in a state of inner turmoil and depressive moods. The pieces were inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann’s bizarre Kapellmeister character Johannes Kreisler, who ends up in madness. Already in the first movement “Extremely moved”, a true “Florestan”, the inner turbulence becomes noticeable and here one of the great strengths of Schliessmann’s interpretation becomes apparent, namely the choice of tempo. In faster movements, Schliessmann tends to use comparatively slightly slower tempos, without the pieces losing any of their tension. On the contrary: through sound coloring and phrasing, Burkard Schliessmann really brings out the urgent Florestan character of the first movement. The same can be seen in other pieces on the album, for example “Aufschwung” and “In der Nacht” from the Fantasy Piecesop. 12. With Schumann, virtuosity never becomes an end in itself and Schliessmann faithfully follows this maxim (in contrast to other of his colleagues). Rather, virtuosity (in the sense of technical perfection) in Schliessmann’s interpretation of Schumann is always in the service of poetry – and with such lightness and transparency that the sometimes enormous technical difficulties of Schumann’s piano movements, especially in the Kreisleriana, are not seen as such noticed.

The lyrical Eusebius sentences also have a poetic depth that is rarely heard. Schliessmann’s performance of the long second movement of the Kreisleriana impresses with perfectly controlled legato playing, which always emphasizes the complexity of polyphony vocally and plastically. The urgent passages appear soft and mysterious, everything develops organically, everything is in flow.

The studio recording of Fantasy in C major available on Fantasies invites comparison with the live recording on Live & Encores. It is particularly noticeable in the third movement that Schliessmann deliberately chose a slower tempo in the studio recording. While on Live & Encores the movement has a playing time of 8:18, on Fantasies he plays it in 9:03. Here it becomes clear how different situations – live and studio – affect the interpretation. Here a greater flow, there a more spherical state. However, both are absolutely coherent and it is worthwhile to look at Schumann’s Fantasy in C major from both aspects.

The following Arabesque op. 18 is recorded twice on Fantasies. It comes across as slightly dance-like at the end of the first SACD. Schliessmann plays its delicate ramifications with a rarely found wealth of nuances and ends with an almost impressionistic tone that no longer seems to be of this world. The second version on Disc B, Track 9 is played with the second, softer intonated mechanics. The tone is middle and gentler, the character is more lyrical.

“Des Abends”, the first number of the Fantasy Pieces op. 12, appears delicate and transparent in its polyphony. These eight miniatures show Schumann’s strength in telling perfect stories in a small space, which in Burkard Schliessmann’s hands achieve a rarely heard poetic quality . The fifth number, “In the Night” (incidentally Schumann’s favorite piece from the work) does not get its passionate quality from the tempo alone. What other pianists unfortunately regurgitate at will, Schliessmann brings to life in an exciting but always transparent manner in the right proportion to the vocal middle section and thus achieves a narrative effect that is reminiscent of the legend of Hero and Leander, which Schumann subsequently recognized in this piece. is completely fair. The humorous “Crickets” are also poetically transcended and while other interpreters tend to make “Traumes Wirren” a superficial circus act, with Schliessmann every note comes to life and leads into the depths of the subconscious that plays tricks on us. Like the arabesque, the final second version of “Des Abends” on disc B is also played with the softer intonated mechanics. Detached from the context of the cycle of fantasy pieces op. 12, this version focuses more on timbres and once again Schliessmann creates an almost impressionistic quality here.

At the same time, the two tracks played with the soft intonated second mechanics (Arabesque and “Des Abends”) are also a sound preparation for the Nachtstück op. 23, which opens the third SACD of the album. Also in the first and fourth numbers of the cycle created in 1839, the title of which corresponds to the stories of the same name by E.T.A. Borrowed from Hoffmann’s, the softer hammer heads are used, which tonally suits the dark, constantly halting funeral march that opens the cycle. The movement appears gentle and introverted, but still dark, and almost has a hypnotic effect. Schliessmann works out the polyphonic structures in the second movement with the utmost perfection in touch, the capricious moments of the third movement impress with their coloring, while the final fourth piece, in which the softer intonated hammer heads are used again, sounds like it comes from another sphere.

The Three Fantasy Pieces op. 111 from Schumann’s time as music director in Düsseldorf seem like a return to his phantasmagoria for piano, which were written between 1837 and 1839 – a generally criminally neglected phase of his work in which Schumann wrote some of his greatest works. Schliessmann’s performance takes the listener through all regions of feeling, strong and passionate at the beginning, vocally in the second movement and with the right amount of energy, wonderfully developed contrasts in the middle section and finely structured arabesques at the end in the third movement.

The album concludes with the songs from the Frühe op. 133, which are rarely played due to their complexity and difficult accessibility and which Robert Schumann offered to the publisher F. W. Arnold shortly before he threw himself into the Rhine in February 1854. In his letter to Arnold, Schumann described the five pieces dedicated to the poet Bettina von Arnim as music “that describe the sensations as the morning approaches, but more as an expression of emotion than as painting.” (quoted from the liner notes). Schliessmann’s performance hits exactly this note. Despite the complexity of the composition, Schliessmann’s interpretation still appears transparent; Every note, every phrase is filled with meaning, explored intellectually and emotionally in depth and made tangible. Both for the chorale at the beginning and for the final piece, the second mechanism with the softer hammer heads is used again and creates a central, gentle tone. This work seems like an apotheosis of Schumann’s fantastically poetic piano work and forms the perfect, almost transcendent conclusion to this great album.

With Robert Schumann: Fantasies, Burkard Schliessmann has opened up new horizons for Schumann interpretation. His performances combine the intellect necessary to understand Schumann’s music, supreme poetry and just the right instinct for timbre, agogics and tempo. In the future, no listener and especially no artist will be able to ignore these recordings. Schliessmann puts one reference recording after another on this album, which also meets the highest standards in terms of sound, presentation and information content.

Robert Schumann: Fantasies by Burkard Schliessmann will be released on March 15, 2024 on the Divine Art label.

Ever the seeker, pianist Burkard Schliessmann revisits the magical, mystical world of Robert Schumann in this latest release. Captured in superlative sound (and in Dolby Atmos via 14 microphones at Teldex Studios, Berlin), his Steinway instrument is caught magnificently by producer Julian Schwenkner and engineer Jupp Wegner. A pianist in the tradition of the greats, Schliessmann mixes a real appreciation and respect for tradition before him with exemplary insight into Schumann’s music, all wrapped in the latest technology. He used a piano (Steinway D-612236) with two keyboards, each with complete mechanics and hammers. One was brighter sounding, one darker. 

Here, Schliessmann presents an exploration of the more phantasmagoric aspect of Schumann’s output. His playing is characterized by complete linear clarity married to a 360-degree harmonic understanding (from immediate detail through to large-scale structure). So it is that Schliessmann can characterise each and every element of Kreisleriana. Many of the traits identified by Peter J. Rabinowitz in his review of Schliessmann’s MSR Kreisleriana (Fanfare 34:3) are present here: crystalline clarity, and a fierce intellectualism combined with the most refined expression. Listen to Schliessmann’s “Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch” (track 2). The legato is perfect, but so is the definition of each note of the upper line, while each element of the inner voices and bass is itself heard as a perfectly judged independent entity heard in heavenly accord. Schumann’s achievements here are magnificent; and so is Schliessmann’s realization.

Schliessmann’s Schumann is far from that of an eager young pup; “Intermezzo I” of Kreisleriana is impulsive yet superbly articulated. The music flows. At times one hears references to orchestral sounds: sequences of intervals that might imply a pair of horns, for example, all invoked the myriad colors at Schliessmann’s disposal. This, coupled with his understanding of process is what makes this performance. There are inevitable points of contact with the earlier MSR recording, but this is deeper; plus, the Divine Art sound is markedly superior. Audophiles will doubtless concentrate on the sonic excellence, therefore, but musicians can revel in the far deeper rewards offered by Schliessmann. He takes risks in the sixth movement, allowing the music to ever so slowly unfurl, and how they pay off. This is Schumann at his most profound. Schliessmann is just as exciting in the seventh movement (“Sehr Rasch”) as in the earlier MSR, but his articulation is clearer (aided of course by that recording: one can really hear the difference in this movement particularly). The finale is, in line with the present release’s core ethos, properly fantastical, the displaced bass creepily stalkerish to the jittery upper line. How gloriously rich, to, the bass Fine though the MSR’s finale was, here on Divine Art, Schliessmann truly honors the fantastical, adding a hint of grotesquerie. 

I reviewed a previous Fantasie by Schliessmann as recently as Fanfare 45:4 (May/June 2022: At the Heart of the Piano). There, the Fantasie was heard in the context of Liszt’s B-Minor Sonata, so comparisons between the works were apt. Here, it is heard within Schumann’s universe only, and so one tends to concentrate on the composer alone. With an expert ear (and foot) for pedalling, Schliessmann reveals both inner lines and significant bass shifts with total confidence and zero unnecessary blurring. In this most recent version, power meets a core of iron. Schliessmann is unafraid of eschewing the sustaining pedal where others cling as if drowning pianists to a piece of flotsam, and the results are often revelatory. The supremely analytical recording does document the odd pianist’s sniff, but that’s part of the feel of performance here. Far more impressive is the almost organ-like sound at times; the processional of the second movement “Mäßig” is full of majesty, as if Schliessmann relates  a fairy tale. Narration is a key aspect to Schumann’s output (whether tethered to a specific premise or not), and Schliessmann is a natural story-teller. This is a marriage made in heaven. In the work’s final panel, the pianist takes more time than previously, allowing the lines to uncurl, supported by a glorious legato. With local melody and crepuscular harmony, the effect is truly magical; and how the piano’s upper register sparkles like starlight. 

The second disc opens with Schumann’s Arabeske, a piece that encapsulates in miniature all that makes Schumann’s piano music special: the intimacy, the sense of rightness, the deft counterpoint. Schliessmann presents it delicately, as the Fantaisie’s whispered after-thought. It is in the realm of the miniature and the shorter movements that Schumann shines, of course, and such is then case here, each movement of op. 12 expertly imagined by Schliessmann. The second, “Aufschwung” certainly has power, but again the ear is led to felicities of counterpoint and inter-voice dialog. Rubao is often a problem in “Warum?,” and yet here it is as natural as can me. It was “Warum?” that appeared on Schliessmann’s Live & Encores release (Fanfare 47:4) which leads me to speculate Schliessmann has a soft spot for this movement. It certainly sounds like it: the “zart” (tender) element is certainly there, and how that contrasts with “Grillen,” which here sounds more experimental than any other performance i know, pointing way forward to the late works. The second book of op. 12 begins with a stormy “In der Nacht,”; a controlled tempest of the heart perhaps, with sudden crescendos implying stabs of emotion. There are risks galore here, and they all pay off. Contrasts in “Fabel” are marked, more so than any other performance I know, and of course that juxtaposition is so perfect for Schumann. The trickiest movement in. a technical sense is surely “Traumes Wirren,” and Schliessmann creates some wonderful textural contrasts (between pedalled and clean sonorities). The final “Ende vom Lied” exudes  contained nobility.

There are two performances of the Arabeske and of “Des Abends” from Fantasiestücke, op. 12, one on each keyboard. The second Arabeske is warmer, its lyrical, contrasting sections perhaps more inviting. The first “Des Abends” is part of the complete set and is beautifully voiced, pure as spring water. The second again inevitably mellower; but what is interesting his how Schliessmann in the second instance finds just as much clarity of melody as with the first. Both shine, perhaps the first like a white pearl and the second like its black counterpart. 

For all of the interpretative and technical victories of the first two discs, it is the final one that is really special, and truly elevates this set above the rest. Schliessmann performs the op. 23 Nachtstücke with an impeccable sense of rightness. Schumann exhibits a real sense of exploration in his op. 23. These four E. T. A. Hoffmann-inspired movements exhibit a whole world, from caprice to dream, all elevated not just by Schliessmann’s playing but by the tremendous presence of the recording (try the richness of the bass at the opening of the third). The flowing final panel stands in high contrast to the Urschrei that opens the first of the op. 111 Fantasiestücke. Penned in 1851, this late set of pieces was written just a few short months after the composer’s appointment at Düsseldorf. Schliessmann gives a tremendous performance of all three, muscular in the first, almost hymnic in the second, a prayer-like meditation with a fearless exploration of the darker crannies of the psyche, casting a shadow over the final ”Kräftig und sehr markiert”. 

Finally, Schumann’s criminally neglected Gesänge der Frühe, the last work Schumann himself prepared for publication.  In his notes, Schliessmann posits a link between this piece and Hölderlin’s Diotima; either way, his performance is extraordinary, eclipsing my previous top recommendation (Piotr Anderszewski on Erato). It is Schliessmann who captures the elusive and entirely individual world of late Schumann to perfection. If I have one wish for this set, it is that Schliessmann’s performance brings Schumann’s op. 133 to a wider public. There is a sort of satisfying symmetry to the indication of the fifth and final movement, “Im Anfang ruhiges” (op. 133/1 is marked, “Im ruhiges Tempo”). Under Schliessmann’s fingers, the music seems to strive for an unknown other, and yet the search emanates from a heart at peace. A truly satisfying reading.

In his booklet notes, Schliessmann posits that the key to understanding Schumann’s phatasmagoria is via his vocal music, and Schliessmann specifically cites the composer’s setting of Heine in the op. 24  Liederkreis, (No. 3, “Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen”; late, he writes on the relationship between Eichendorff and Schumann (via “Zwielicht” from the op. 29 Liederkreis). The booklet indeed makes for fascinating reading, but it is the music itself that matters. Burkard Schliessmann, in his finest offering yet, offers a homage to Schumann for the ages.

In 47:4, I reviewed a Divine Art set (25755) from Burkard Schliessmann, performing a mix of works by composers near and dear to him: Bach, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. At the time, I was not aware that a new three-disc set from Schliessmann was in the offing, one devoted exclusively to Schumann. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, for Schliessmann’s love of Schumann’s music has been a lifelong one that runs deep.

Since the previously cited set already included selections by Schumann, my first order of business was to determine if there were any duplications between the two releases. The short answer is a qualified “yes.” Both the earlier album and the new one at hand contain the complete Fantasie in C, op. 17, which is generally regarded as one of, if not the, most important and technically challenging of the composer’s works for solo piano. They are not, however, the same performance. The earlier recording was captured “live” in March of 2023, while the present recording, as attested to by Schliessmann in his album note, is a studio production made five months later in August of 2023.

There is also one other minor overlap in programming, but it doesn’t really count because it’s just an excerpt, an outtake if you will, from a much larger work. In the “live” recording, Schliessmann treated us to what amounted to an “encore” with the inclusion of the third number, “Warum?” from the composer’s Fantasiestücke, op. 12. Here he gives us the Fantasiestücke in full.

True to its title, Robert Schumann Fantasies, the new set under review, addresses itself to the composer’s catalog of “fantasy” and related-type pieces. So, I suppose the place to start is with a definition of the genre or typology. Britannica.com succinctly defines a musical fantasy—with all of its linguistic variants based on country of origin and musical period—as “a composition free in form and inspiration, usually for an instrumental soloist.” Not very helpful, as that could apply to almost anything. By that definition, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun could be a fantasy.

Wikipedia refines it a bit further for us, stating that a “fantasy is a musical composition with roots in improvisation, and that like the impromptu, it seldom follows the textbook rules of any strict musical form.”

The fantasy, as practiced by Schumann and other 19th-century composers, is a construct of the Romantic period, but conceptually and contextually the language of musical fantasy extends back to the late 16th- and early 17th centuries, manifesting itself in the organ and keyboard works of Sweelinck and Frescobaldi, and a bit later in the fantasias of Bach.

The difference between those fantasies and the ones we find in Schumann and the musical Romantic in general is that the later period examples are often, if not invariably, associated with descriptive imagery, poetic verse, and/or story-telling. In other words, the 19th-century fantasy is a subset of program music. For Bach, a fantasia was about the improvisatory style of the music, its textural contrasts, surprising harmonies and progressions, and displays of technical virtuosity. It’s doubtful that Bach had any extra-musical motives in mind.

So, let’s pursue the model of the Romantic fantasy stated above and see if it applies—or doesn’t—to some or all of Schumann’s works in Schliesssmann’s collection.

In Kreisleriana, op. 16—composed originally in 1838 and revised in 1850—Schumann asks the listener to imagine in the eight numbers that make up the piece, the deteriorating sanity of the musical genius, Johannes Kreisler, the fictional Kapellmeister invented by the early Romantic author, E. T. A. Hoffmann. Did Schumann foresee his own descent into madness when he wrote the piece? That’s a question for another day. Here we’re confronted with an early example of Schumann’s dueling personalities, as expressed by the music’s sudden and violent swings between storm and calm, fear and euphoria. We meet these characters again in other of Schumann’s works in the guise of the composer’s ego and alter-ego, Florestan and Eusebius.

Can Kreisleriana be listened to as abstract music, without prior knowledge of Hoffmann’s creation of the imaginary musical genius who loses his marbles? Probably, because music does not communicate to us on a higher cognitive level. Its means of communication is more primitive and more powerful, going directly to the “lizard” part of the brain that holds sway over our emotional responses.

But the point here is what Kreisleriana meant to Schumann and what he hoped it would mean to us. It’s music about love, passionate and manic. The wild mood swings in the piece mirror the composer’s daydreaming about finally being with his beloved Clara and his fits of pique over her father trying to keep his daughter and her young suitor apart.

Fantasiestücke, op. 12, preceded Kreisleriana, but only by a matter of a few months. Composed in 1837, it too originally drew inspiration from a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann that appeared in the same collection of the author’s novellas in which Kreisleriana was published.

Like its Kreisleriana companion, Schumann’s op. 12—with the musical content and contrasts of its eight numbers and the poetic titles he gave them—also expresses his fever fantasies about Clara and his impatience at not being with her. The layout, however, of op. 12 is a bit different. The eight pieces are divided into two books of four numbers each. Schumann omitted a planned ninth piece, originally intended for the Fantasiestücke, from the final draft. It’s untitled and wasn’t published until 1935, when it was logged in the composer’s catalog as RSW:op12:Anh (H/K WoO 28).

Schliessmann does not play the orphaned piece, but he does do something interesting. At the end of disc two, he repeats the first number of op. 12, Des Abends. The pianist explains in a paragraph of the album note that “the recording features two different interpretations of some works, such as the Arabeske and Des Abends from the Fantasiestücke, op.12, by exchanging the keyboards. This demonstrated the influence of the instrument and acoustics on interpretation. The second SACD includes a unique rendition of Des Abends, creating a transition to the darkness of the Nachtstücke, op. 23, introducing the late pieces by Schumann.”

Stepping back another year to 1836, we come to the Fantasie in C, op. 17, the most ambitious and largest in scope of the composer’s clutch of early fantasy works for solo piano. This is regarded, and arguably so, as Schumann’s greatest work for the instrument. As works of this genre go, however, it seems to have lost its original motivation as yet another expression of the composer’s loins longing for Clara when work on the composition became entangled in a project to raise funds for a memorial statue of Beethoven to be erected in Bonn. Schumann’s contribution to the enterprise would be the money to come from the first 100 copies of the Fantasie sold.

But it didn’t work out quite as planned. Schumann’s Fantasie was so…well…fantastical and so difficult that no publisher it was offered to would touch it. Schumann finally dedicated the finished work to Liszt, Breitkopf & Härtel took a risk on it, and the rest is history. As noted earlier, this is the one work duplicated in full between Schliessmann’s earlier “live” recording and this one, so, further on, it will be interesting to compare the two performances.

Now, Kreisleriana, the Fantasiestücke, and the Fantasie in C are three of the “biggies” among Schumann’s early fantasy-type works. Schliessmann of course, does not include all of the composer’s works in the genre. Missing from this compilation are works as such Carnaval (1834–35), Kinderszenen (1838), Novelletten (1838), Faschingsschwank aus Wien (1839), and Waldszenen (1848–49), to name five. It all goes back, of course, to how one defines or categorizes “fantasy.” However, there are other works to choose from, some not as often heard, and from among them, the pianist gives us Arabeske, op. 18 (1839), Nachtstücke, op. 23 (1839), 3 Fantasy Pieces, op. 111 (1851), and Gesänge der Frühe, op. 133 (1853).

In the category of 19th century fantasy, and especially in the works of Schumann, lines blur. “Fantasy” encompasses and is encompassed by a number of related genres: character pieces, tone paintings, mood enhancers, and even compositions with no extra-musical intent, designed solely for the purpose of virtuosic display and technical one-upmanship. An example of the latter is Schumann’s Toccata in C, op. 7 (1830, revised 1833), still regarded to this day as “one of the most ferociously difficult pieces in the piano repertoire” [Richard E. Rodda].

As noted earlier, there is a duplication between the earlier “live” recording version of the Fantasie in C, op. 17, and this new studio recording of the piece. In execution, interpretation, and timings, Schliessmann’s readings of the first two movements are uncannily similar. Only in the concluding movement, does one hear a significant variance. Here the pianist is more mindful of Schumann’s langsam getragen (borne more slowly).

Live version: 12:45 8:09 8:18

New version: 12:50 8:11 9:03

There is, however, another difference which, to my ear, seems to cast a more nuanced textural and coloristic effect on the music in the new performance, one which goes beyond the more elaborate recording setup employed for the studio recording. That difference, I think, relates to the instruments used. For the earlier “live” performance, Schliessmann played a Fazioli F278 concert grand. For the current studio performance, he played a Steinway D274 concert grand. In past reviews, I’ve been very impressed by the sound of Fazioli pianos, but in this case, it’s the Steinway that seems to lend greater clarity or precision to Schumann’s unique keyboard manner and to give stronger expression to his flights of fantasy.

Mentioned earlier, too, was that for the Arabeske and the repeat of Des Abends from the Fantasiestücke, Burkard exchanges keyboards. On first reading that, I thought it an odd way to say that he switched to a different piano. But a deeper dive into the album notes revealed the reason that the word “keyboards” was used here. The keyboards are two but the piano is one, having been fitted with a second keyboard, much like a two-manual harpsichord I imagine. I quote from the note: “There were two different keyboards in use, different in voicing and intonation, provided by a flying case.”

The recording itself, it should be noted, is very high-tech, above and beyond most high-tech, state-of-the-art SACD recordings. Fourteen microphones were employed to capture Schliessmann in Dolby Atmos, “a revolutionary spatial audio technology for the most immersive sound experience.”

Burkard’s pianism is, as always, a thing of beauty to behold, at once limpid and limned, while always equally as constant in attention to the demands and details of the score as to the emotions and expressive gestures the written notes imply. The fusion of technical mastery and musical insight to this degree combine to produce artistry of the highest caliber.

In my experience, Burkard Schliessmann’s Schumann may be equaled by two or three pianists past—Richter, Horowitz, and especially Arrau—but he is not surpassed by any of them.