Word: schumann
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...Robert Schumann's irrefutable greatness rests on the expressive richness of his piano music and the beauty of his lyric songs. However, his stature as a symphonist has remained unsettled since his death in 1856. For some he is the link between Schubert's lyricism and Brahms' grandeur. But The New Grove Dictionary dismisses his symphonies as "inflated piano music with mainly routine orchestration." Because of their melodic fecundity and power, they remain widely performed and recorded. Still, conductors from Gustav Mahler to George Szell have edited their working scores, attempting to compensate for Schumann's putative deficiencies: amateurish orchestration...
...conductor John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique have recorded Schumann's orchestral music (Archiv Produktion; 3 CDs) using period instruments and adhering to period performance practices. The effect is analogous to the restored ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Stripped of the meddling of others (added parts, re-written transitions, etc.) and the blurred tonal qualities that large modern ensembles can create, these fervent performances reveal sculptural definition, brightness, clarity and beauty of a previously undisclosed intensity...
DIED. CONRAD SCHUMANN, 56, unwitting cold war icon whose impromptu 1961 border crossing produced one of the era's most searing images; after hanging himself; in Bavaria, Germany. Shutterbug Peter Leibing stood by--and snapped--as the defiant 19-year-old East German soldier hurdled the tangle of barbed wire that would soon become the Berlin Wall...
...Berlin Symphony Orchestra bestowed the rare gift of an encore performance upon its audience. Brought to the NEC in the midst of the 1997-98 BankBoston Celebrity Series, the orchestra, with conductor Joseph Silverstein and piano soloist Derek Han, already possessed a well-packaged program of Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann--one could not have asked for a more fitting embellishment than a bit of Beethoven...
Following a 20 minute intermission, the orchestra plunged directly into what would have been the final piece of its program, Schumann's Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major, "Spring." Here the layering of textures is much deeper than in Brahms' work, with a fanfare from the trumpets heralding the arrival of a multitude of entrances from all sections of the orchestra. Mimicking the bustle of springtime with trilling ornamentation and a robust tone, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra lost none of the momentum it received with Derek Han's performance; even the more placid Larghetto was imbued with the anticipation...