Schumann: First Masterworks [2CDs]

“Feltsman’s performance, recorded in 2014 and 2017, lets us range over the extraordinary first pieces by Schumann. His skill in bringing out both the beauty and deliberate awkwardness of Schumann’s compositions is realized throughout. Schumann’s complex personality, which alternately revealed and hid too much, comes through in the music that sounds simple but that can be devilishly difficult to achieve – the technical challenge is making the simplicity come through. This Feltsman achieves in a way that makes it all seem so clear.” Maureen Buja, Interlude [read complete review]

Vladimir Feltsman is a sympathetic interpreter of the music of the middle 19th century, with several incisive Schumann albums to his credit. Here, he offers a program that may well be unique, tracing the development of Schumann's style "from ABEGG to Nachtstücke," as Feltsman puts it in his always instructive and elegant booklet notes, adorned here with a quotation from Jean Paul, "The whole world shines for the poet." This points to the strengths of Feltsman's readings. Other pianists may wring greater lyricism out of individual pieces, but for insight into the intellectual and cultural currents in which Schumann was swimming, he can't be beat. On one hand, it is true that Schumann appeared in the world as a fully formed genius, but those currents grow deeper as the music on this program proceeds in Feltsman's hands. The opening Variations on the name Abegg, Op. 1, is not much played, but it shows how Schumann's imagination was active from the start; the piece is dedicated to a purely fictitious Pauline von Abegg, the letters of whose name just happen to provide the notes of a theme for Schumann's set of variations. Feltsman nicely captures the improvisatory quality of the breathtakingly miniature Papillons, Op. 2, and Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, and in the "Florestan" / "Eusebius" pair of Carnaval, Op. 9, representing Schumann's ongoing self-personification of the two sides of his personality, there is a real sense in these performances of Schumann arriving at the idea and moving into it confidently. Likewise, Feltsman gives space to the larger pieces that mark the inauguration of the next phase of Schumann's career. Beautifully recorded at the Wyastone Estate, this is a release that brings Schumann alive. - All Music, James Manheim