Program Notes

Robert Schumann: Symphonic Études, Op. 13

Robert Schumann was a curious child. The youngest in a family of five children, Schumann showed an early affinity for music and began composing as a child. His curiosity also expanded to the world of books and literature, an interest that would have a significant effect on his most stirring piano works.

Schumann’s father encouraged his son’s pursuit of music. After his father’s death in 1826, Schumann began to seriously study the piano, hoping to become a great concert pianist. His fascination with the technical workings of the fingers, combined with his own shortcomings as a pianist, led Schumann to construct a mechanism designed to strengthen the weaker fingers. Sadly, Schumann’s experiments caused permanent damage to his hands and fingers, effectively ending any chance of a career as a concert pianist. As a result, Schumann turned to composing.

It is easier to understand the rhapsodic emotion of the Symphonic Études within the context of Schumann’s obsessive fascination with pianistic transcendence. The composition of the Études — written between 1834 and 1837 — overlaps slightly with the composition of Carnaval, arguably Schumann’s most rousing piano cycles, though they do not share the same joyful exuberance.

The Études are a set of theme and variations, based on a somber opening theme. Each subsequent étude variation builds in intensity and liveliness until the finale which is marked Allegro brilliante (cheerful and sparkling). In composing the Symphonic Études, Schumann was inspired by Beethoven’s heroic symphonies, striving to recreate the fullness of the orchestral textures on the piano.

The work stands among Schumann’s most difficult for the piano, indicative of his deep dive into polyphonic and technical experimentation on the instrument. The grand scope of the

Symphonic Études inspired Johannes Brahms in the composition of his large-scale Paganini and Handel variations and continue to be a mainstay of Romantic piano literature.

Johannes Brahms: Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5

Like Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms showed promise as a pianist in his youth. As a teenager, Brahms used his talents at the piano to earn money for his family, playing in the dockside inns of Hamburg while composing and giving recitals. On the cusp of turning 20, Brahms embarked on a concert tour accompanying the flashy Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi.

While on tour, Brahms met another violinist, Joseph Joachim, whose more traditional musical sensibilities better matched Brahms’ own. Joachim was so taken with the young Brahms that he introduced him to Robert Schumann who at the time was the leading music writer and critic throughout Germany. Schumann took an immediate liking to Brahms, igniting a connection that would stretch throughout Schumann’s life.

It was during this musical blossoming that Brahms composed his Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor. It was widely felt that the piano sonata was an archaic classical form, not conducive to the expansive shift that musical structures were undergoing in the Romantic era. But Brahms pulls out all the stops for his third and final piano sonata, fusing classical architecture with romantic ideology, demonstrating that the sonata form could develop to include Romantic sensibilities.

The Sonata is composed of five movements, a significant expansion from the traditional three or four. Beethoven, who himself transformed the sonata form, once again provides inspiration with the appearance of the “fate motif” in several of the movements (more widely known as the opening of his Symphony No. 5).

The first movement of the sonata is characteristic of Brahms’ contrasting moods and rhythmic complexity. His use of keys and harmonic development is mirrored in the second movement which is prefaced with a poetic quote referencing “two hearts that join in love,” a nod to the two musical themes that interplay throughout the movement.

The Scherzo juxtaposes flashes of cascading arpeggios with a stately trio. The fourth movement is a meditative intermezzo titled “Remembrance.” Here we have the additional movement not typically found in classical or romantic sonatas: while it shares many elements with the other movements (listen again for Beethoven’s “fate motif”), it is unique in its use of harmonic sound and function.

The final movement is a rousing Rondo Brahms once again combines pianistic virtuosity with noble lyricism to create an appropriate finale to this musical journey.

— Corey Knick