This CD features two of the most emblematic piano pieces from the early nineteenth century by Robert Schumann (1810–1856), his Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 (1836–38) and Carnaval Op. 9 (1834–35), plus a piano transcription of ‘Mondnacht’ from the composer's Liederkreis Op. 39 (1840). The works are beautifully performed by Emile Naoumoff (born 1962), a renowned pianist, composer, and conductor originally from Sofia, Bulgaria, and educated in Paris. His also is the piano transcription of Schumann's lied, originally for voice and piano. The compact disc's total duration is 1:16′. The Fantasie Op. 17, in an unusually long version with some very slow tempi, clocks at 37′40″.Footnote ¹ The Carnaval clocks at 33′47″ and the piano transcription of ‘Mondnacht’ at 3′58″.

Naoumoff was a child prodigy who studied with Nadia Boulanger from the age of 7 until Boulanger's death in 1979, and she referred to him as ‘the gift of [her] old age’.Footnote ² He also worked, early on, with such high-level musicians as Robert and Gaby Casadesus, Leonard Bernstein, Aram Khachaturian, and Yehudi Menuhin, and pursued studies at the Paris Conservatory and at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. A faculty member at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Naoumoff has appeared with some of the best orchestras and conductors around the world and collaborated with fellow musicians like Yo-Yo Ma, Gary Hoffman, Jean-Pierre Rampal and many others. He has also recorded over 45 compact discs with music by Brahms, Beethoven, Fauré, Schubert, Mozart, Debussy, and other composers, together with a number of works and piano transcriptions of his own.Footnote ³

The CD's liner notes (in English, French and German) are by Gregory Martin, based on notes by Naoumoff himself. They offer important stylistic, biographical, and historical references on Schumann, his musical style, and the two main pieces performed. And they do it in a style that resonates with the music they are describing – rather than a tightly organized information-heavy text, they present a collection of insightful, illuminating commentaries on the composer, his works, and their cultural context, which emulates the ‘poetic quality’ of much of his music. Gregory Martin describes the composer's musical world as one ‘situated at the crossroads of daydreaming and storytelling’, and weaves into the image references to Jean Paul's influence and to Schumann's mental health struggles (p. 5). He describes the composer's music as propelled by a sense of rhythmic instability and delayed resolutions and refers to the difficulties it creates for pedalling (p. 5) The bulk of the notes is devoted to the Fantasie and the Carnaval. The former work is introduced in connection to Beethoven (both in terms of the monument it was associated to and of the quotation from the composer's An die Ferne Geliebte which closes its first movement). The notes then refer to the connection suggested by Schumann himself between his beloved Clara Wieck and the motto by Hegel that appears at the beginning of the piece; and to Naoumoff's choice to improvise an ending for the work based on the An die ferne Geliebte quotation, which ‘nests the emblematic melodic line in a texture saturated with the gentle and meditative arpeggios that flow across the Finale’ (p. 6). Similarly, the liner notes on the Carnaval touch on a number of references often discussed in connection with it: Schlegel's notion of the Romantic fragment, the use of motives carved out from letters, humour, and the role of the fictitious characters Florestan and Eusebius in Schumann's life and work.

The first piece on the CD, the Fantasie Op. 17, is a three-movement large-scale piano work that has invited a wealth of interpretations – formal and otherwise. Between its original date of composition, 1836, and its publication in 1839, Schumann referred to the work, alternatively, as Ruins: Fantasie for the pianoforte (in an early autographed manuscript of only the first movement that is currently inaccessible); Grand Piano Sonata for Beethoven (with movements titled ‘Ruins’, ‘Trophies’, and ‘Palms’); Fantasies; and, lastly, Dichtungen (with movement titled ‘Ruins’, ‘Triumphal Arch’, and ‘Constellation’). Ultimately, Schumann changed the title to Fantasie in C Major Op. 17, as we know it today. The numerous changes in title that the piece underwent are symptomatic of its complex compositional history, which is only partially captured in a number of isolated – and sometimes seemingly conflicting – references in Schumann's diary and letters. Nicholas Marston has carefully examined these, and he has persuasively argued that the earliest version of the work – as it appeared in the 1836 autograph manuscript – consisted of only the first movement of the published work and was composed, in fact, with Clara in mind, after a forced and painful period of separation in 1836. According to Marston, Schumann reimagined the work a few months later as a three-movement piano sonata for Beethoven, whose publication he intended as part of a fundraising effort for a monument to be built in his memory. But, for a number of reasons, the work was published in 1839, without any reference to the Beethoven project.Footnote ⁴ Its associations with Clara and Beethoven – further reinforced by a quotation of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte at the end of its first movementFootnote ⁵ – historically have coloured our understanding of the work.

Particularly intriguing is the issue of its formal organization, which defies categorization or even normative descriptions. A herald of the difficulties facing us nowadays, Schumann's contemporary, the critic and composer Carl Kossmaly, saw in the work ‘abundant examples of the lavishly proliferating, most stimulating excess … characteristic of the new Romantic hyper-ingenuity’.Footnote ⁶ And over a century later, Charles Rosen – in an often-quoted statement – would proclaim it as the ‘monument that commemorates the death of the Classical style’.Footnote ⁷

The first movement of the Fantasie displays, in fact, an exuberance of materials and formal-rhetorical gestures that do not easily converge into a single unified linear process. Competing interpretations have been suggested as a sonata form with a digressive arabesque in the recapitulationFootnote ⁸ and a sui generis ternary form in which the middle section, the Im Legendenton, acts as a ‘central narrative framed by two derivative sections’ – as in Schlegel's novel Lucinde.Footnote ⁹ I believe that an understanding seeking to account for the many idiosyncratic formal events in the movement (rather than ‘normalize’ them), suggests the interaction of co-existing, competing ternary forms. Within them, a wealth of motivically interrelated passages lead repeatedly toward and away from stability and, in the process, often shed their initial formal-dramatic function mid-course (thematic-expository, transitional, recapitulatory, developmental) and either acquire a new one or move towards ‘disintegration’.Footnote ¹⁰ The relationship between these passages and the (mostly) non-normative dynamic curves they embody bring further formal and expressive power to them.Footnote ¹¹ The only normative dynamic curve of the piece – at the beginning of the Im Legendenton – fails to repeat, after setting strong expectations for a magnified repetition. When the ‘aborted’ trajectory is resumed, the peak is reached prematurely and, therefore, unsatisfactorily. Just as the movement's formal process lacks a unique all-controlling event to bring it together into a tightly unified whole, so is its affective-expressive narrative heavily coloured by the music's failure to deliver a much-expected focal moment of fulfilment.

The second movement of the work also presents a complex formal design, which has been described a March–Trio–March with a coda, where the opening March is in a relatively straightforward ABA form, the Trio is in an ABX form, and the closing March is missing the first A section,Footnote ¹² (presumably, a sort of _BA form, where the ‘ _ ’ would indicate a missing section with respect to the normative model of choice). This second movement is marked Mässig-Durchaus energish and although its opening theme is often characterized as a march, it can also be heard as a jubilant Hymn-Chorale. The movement is considerably more uniform in mood, and less exuberant in terms of textures and materials than the first one. The Chorale-like theme appears three times, interspersed among various other passages that share related thematic materials and, for the most part, a pervasive dotted figuration.

Formally, the third movement is perhaps more perplexing than the preceding two, as various thematic sections are combined and restated in ways that defy association with a formal function from harmonic or rhetorical points of view, except for the last section, which does behave like a coda. Scholars traditionally have avoided offering formal interpretations of the same. Only Nicholas Marston, to my knowledge, has suggested a very sui generis two-part form.Footnote ¹³ Indeed, one tends to relate to the movement as a telescoped miniature or character piece of sorts, rather than a large-scale movement in any conventional sense of the term.

Naoumoff's interpretation of Schumann's Fantasie Op. 17 is perhaps as fanciful as the piece itself. It is incredibly free in his handling of tempi and profoundly expressive in his overall pianism. The first movement is considerably slower than in most – maybe all – other recordings (and well below Schumann's metronome marking). It also displays a significant degree of freedom not just with respect to the tempi changes indicated by the composer but also often in the shaping of phrases and sections with respect to the parameter in question, where no change is indicated by the composer. Though considerably more pronounced than in most interpretations, the resulting effect seems appropriate for a Fantasy, and for a composer whose early music in particular has been connected to aesthetic categories like the fragment and the arabesque, and to improvisation as compositional procedure. In Naoumoff's hands, the Fantasie in C minor greatly relies on the immediate expressive character of passages and moves away, as it were, from its already fragile sense of traditional (linear) coherence and large-scale form. The work's tremendous wealth of materials and musical gestures – which often subvert traditional expectations, phrase structure, function, sense of completion, and climactic and cadential points – are often charged with pronounced expressive attributes that more than sustain them in the face of formal ‘equivocation’, as it were. These expressive qualities become more substantial – even primordial – at Naoumoff's slow tempo and, in his hands, create a truly unique effect. The first movement, in particular, acquires an even more ineffable quality in his interpretation. The journey he takes listeners on, through the most enchanting sonorities and impetuous passages invites them, first and foremost, to revel intensely in the moment. It is as if the combination of Naoumoff's tempo and sonorities would demand from the listener a different way of listening – one that de-emphasizes wholeness and process and privileges the ‘musical moment’. The otherworldly effect that his pianism creates in the most intimate, lyrical moments in the movement rises to an unprecedented level in bars 216–224, when a simple, slow melodic elaboration of a closing gesture becomes the most breath-taking moment into ‘nothingness’, as it were, right before the dramatic return at the Erstes Tempo.

Naomouff's interpretation of the second movement, if more conventional in terms of tempi, also offers a beautiful array of sonorous qualities. The first section (bars 1–113) combines particularly warm, robust sonorities in the opening material (e.g., bars 1–8) with fanciful, nimble passage work (with a light, effective use of pedalling) in occasions when both hands have dotted rhythms (e.g., bars 25–39). The same dotted figuration becomes unobtrusive accompaniment to an inner voice moving in ascending melodic sequences (e.g., bars 22–26), and fierce figuration when in connection with held octaves in the low register (e.g., bars 80–88). Despite a relatively segmented quality in the music, Naomouff maintains a sense of drive forward which is only interrupted for the beginning of the middle section (beginning at bar 114). A delicate, uncanny Etwas bewegter brings a moment of heightened lyricism, which will soon pick up the level of energy necessary to reintroduce the first section. Before it does, a parenthetical scherzando (bars 141–157) brings back the nimble quality mentioned above and is subsequently followed by the intervening dotted passages that had prepared the return of the chorale-like material in the first section. After the return of the same, Naomouff reverts to a playful, if more vigorous, sonority for the coda. The third movement is perhaps closer to the first in that it invites the listener to immerse herself in a sonic world of expressive colours, harmonies and melodic gestures, rather than in one of musical processes. The ‘dreamy’ quality of the opening material, which recreates the atmosphere of a Chopin Nocturne without its ‘guiding’ melodic line, finds a wonderful match in the poetic quality of his pianism. The return of the opening music on ♭VI and ♭VI/IV, among other things, points to the kind of fantastic quality that characterizes the Fantasie and that Naoumoff captures so well. And, as the liner notes indicate (p. 6), Naoumoff takes the liberty to change the ending of the movement (and of the piece as a whole) by inserting the quotation from An die ferne Geliebte that closes the work's first movement. In discussing the piece, Schumann had talked about plans to end the movement with the quotation in question. But he did not do it, certainly not in the work as published. The liner notes justify Naoumoff's rewriting of the ending by claiming that, in so doing, he ‘embraced both [the composers’] wishes and the improvisatory nature of the work’ (p. 6). Perhaps the most meaningful clue to the present rendition of the Fantasie may well lie in the opening of the liner notes ‘Cortot used to say that one should not play Schumann, but rather enter into a dream with him’ (p. 5).

The second work in the CD, Naoumoff's piano transcription of ‘Mondnacht’, is a curious addition that can perhaps be best understood in the context of his numerous transcriptions of vocal and instrumental music for the piano – likely products of the marriage between his composer and performing personas. But such a transcription can only aspire to approach, through the piano, the cantabile quality of which the human voice is capable. Given Naoumoff's fantastic sonorities, one could probably argue that his is as close as it is pianistically possible. But from the point of view of the listener, the absence of text and of the voice's ‘grain’ seems just too great a loss. One can only wonder if the inclusion of the piece may not represent a brief (and well-earned) moment of ‘pleasurable self-indulgence’ of sorts, for lack of a better term.

The third work, Schumann's Carnaval is one of the most iconic piano works by the composer and a staple of today's piano repertory. It is a cycle of 21 short character pieces meant to depict important figures in Schumann's life – e.g., Ernestine von Fricke, Clara Wieck, Chopin, Paganini, and the composer's imaginary alter egos, Florestan and Eusebius. Completed about three years before the Fantasie, it also disconcerted Schumann's contemporaries with its rapid succession of contrasting piano miniatures, which sometimes led into, interrupted, and/or quoted one another. Today we understand the Carnaval as lying at the intersection of a number of aesthetic categories and stylistic elements central to Schumann's style.Footnote ¹⁴ As a musical representation of a ‘parade’ of characters in a masquerade ball, it points to Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre (1804–05), which Schumann often claimed as a strong influence. A quotation from the composer's Papillons Op. 2 and his use of that very title for one of the pieces in the cycle, directly connects it with an image that, according to his own writings, also carried tremendous significance in his music. The character pieces themselves have been understood, for decades now, in light of Friedrich Schlegel's category of the ‘fragment’.Footnote ¹⁵ And Schumann's multiple references to Witz also bring centre-stage the not-so-obscure motivic connections between the pieces. The subtitle of the work, ‘Scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes’ points to the fact that almost all pieces in the cycle use one of two motives derived from Schumann's last name and from ‘Asch’, the birth town of his love interest before Clara, i.e., Ernestine von Fricken.

Formally, however, the work is more complex than just a series of character pieces. Not only are most of them based on one of two motives that Schumann labelled in the score as ‘Sphinxes’ – A-S-C-H and As-C-H (A-E♭-C-B and A-E♭-C-B) – but they also share salient textural and rhythmic characteristics. Most of the individual pieces are constituted by short sections, some of which appear and re-appear in a different context, in subsequent pieces. ‘Coquette’, for instance, opens with a clear cadential bass line accompanied with a right-hand figuration that will become thematic for the rest of the piece. When the next piece (‘Réplique’) begins, it opens up with a the same cadential bass line which functions this time as the idea in a sentence-like theme of sorts. The idea in question, its repetition, and a continuation of sorts are all extended through a repetition accompanied by the two-bar right-hand figuration that appeared in the opening of ‘Coquette’. The middle Piú presto section in ‘Estrella’ in turn, introduces a regular melodic hemiola, which is reminiscent of one that is three-times stated in the Presto and last section of the opening ‘Préambule’. As we will see, these are by no means the only examples. All in all, the work unfolds as a series of brief multi-sectional pieces where section and motives come back in different contexts. Against this background, a number of rhythmic and metrical dissonances often lend a sense of direction forward to the music within, and sometimes across, sections and pieces.

Naoumoff's interpretation of Schumann's Carnaval takes full advantage of the ‘poetic’ character of the work. His convincing phrasing and use of rubato; his unusual (and for the most part entirely persuasive) tempi; his highly discerning use of pedal and articulation; and, in general, his extraordinary pianism result in a greatly expanded palette of characters, textures, sonorities and expressive qualities in which the listener can revel. As is the case in piano (and song) cycles, the music draws a sense of coherence that is more often than not multi-directional and discontinuous rather than linear. I dare say, however, that, in addition to the heightened sense of expressiveness that Naoumoff brings to the pieces, his interpretation also sometimes creates broad directional expressive curves in the music that are very compelling.

The opening piece, ‘Préamble’, offers a glimpse into his incredibly nuanced pianism and illustrates the point. It has five different tempo markings (Quasi maestoso, Più moto, Animato, Vivo, and Presto). The opening chordal section of the Quasi Maestoso displays a wonderful combination of robustness and phrase directionality, neither one of which detracts from the other in the slightest. The strong repeated gesture that begins the piece (and that introduces the D minor chord) gives way to a third statement that sheds just enough intensity to become the launching point of the four-measure crescendo phrase it initiates, with its majestic potential fully realized. The Più moto that follows, lighter and a bit slower than in many other recordings, introduces a quality of playfulness that resurfaces often in the work. Its third section (bars 47–54) then projects a certain measured, limpid quality – the result of tempo, articulation and pedalling – that is almost more characteristic of Mozart than of Schumann. This measured quality soon gives way to a sense of agitation brought about by a swaying ascending motion in octaves in the right hand (first cut short and then successfully resumed), a lusher use of pedal, and the metric dissonance in the left hand (beginning at bar 55). The passage is then repeated and this time it leads into a long hemiola elaboration on the dominant that feels unstoppable (bars 62–7). The subsequent restatement of material from bar 47 only interrupts the flurry of excitement very briefly and the resulting ‘unspent’ energy ushers in, effectively, the Animato section. The return of the figuration from the beginning of the previous section – a descending arpeggio preceded by a neighbour tone elaboration – no longer projects any sense of restraint. It is now infused with a feverish energy that leads to the Vivo and then to the Presto. The latter is, in turn, a fullyfledged hemiola section in minim octaves (reminiscent of bars 62–67) which brings the piece to a close on a frantic note. (Not surprisingly, the same section returns, expanded, for the closing of the work as a whole.) The description illustrates my reference to ‘expressive curves’. Schumann's ‘Prèamble’ – a highly sectionalized piece with a considerable abundance of thematic and motivic material – draws a sense of directionality certainly from his handling of rhythmic dissonances but, beyond that, from a rather broad overarching ‘expressive’ shaped by Naoumoff, which begins with the Più motto and ends with the piece.

A number of other special elements in Naoumoff's interpretation deserve attention, but I will refer only to a few selected ones. ‘Pierrot’, for instance, displays an unusual array of colour and body in its sonorities. It also illustrates one of several rhythmic licenses Naoumoff takes (notice the accelerando in bars 36–40) in the process of building up to the fortissimo statement at bar 40). A relatively slow tempo and sparing pedalling in ‘Arlequin’ produce a fine alternation of delicate staccato gestures and legato melodic segments. His rendition of ‘Eusebius’, is nothing short of breath-taking. The otherworldly realm that the listener enters into with the first notes is never left in the movement; not with the repeated elaboration of the themes at bar 9 or – even more unusual – with the further textural and registral expansion of the same at bar 47. In many other performances the latter elaboration of the theme, in particular, acquires a mildly passionate character. Naoumoff's, in contrast, maintains the tenderness that Schumann indicates. ‘Coquette’ offers a great example of his subtle pianism, as he distinguishes between the main figuration with detached gestures (e.g., bars 1, 2 and 4) and with dotted rhythms and an overarching legato slur (e.g., bars 12 and 14), without losing his very light, playful touch. Curiously enough, his distinction does not always correspond to Schumann's articulation markings. ‘Chiarina’ and, particularly, ‘Chopin’ are, in turn, refreshingly vigorous, very much in keeping with Schumann's tempo and expressive markings. ‘Pantalon et Colombine’ surprises a bit with a slower-than-usual tempo and a certain weightiness. And ‘Pause’ is a most effective gathering of energy for the last piece of the cycle, ‘Marche des ‘Davidsbündler’. Like the opening ‘Prèambule’, the ‘Marche’ has a number of sections marked by new tempi and, sometimes, different thematic, figurational material. It is a grandiose finale (for a character piece in a piano cycle) and it could be considered, in a way, a greatly expanded re-writing of the opening piece. It begins with different melodic material, which has the same broad register and chordal texture, and the overly jubilant character of the ‘Prèamble’. As it unfolds, the resemblance between the pieces becomes more explicit, as the Animato, Vivo, Animato molto, Vivo and Più stretto of the closing piece either begin with or are entire repetitions of passages from the first one. Perhaps not surprisingly, Naoumoff's interpretation imbues the closing piece of the cycle, much like it did the opening, with a strong sense of directionality at the level of the phrase, even in the face of heavy textures and fortissimo dynamics. He also creates an overarching sense of momentum across sections for the final piece of the cycle – a momentum that reaches an almost feverish pitch when he reaches the Più stretto.

All in all, Naoumoff's Carnaval offers the listener an array of fantastic sonorous experiences that bring to life Schumann's world of emotions, affections, and imagination. From this point of view, his interpretation aligns beautifully with the aesthetic of the fragment, which has been so persuasively brought into the picture to explain his piano (and song) cycles. Further testimony of Naomouff's earnest entering into the world of Schumann's may be his decision to play the three loose ‘Sphinxes’ that appear in the score, between ‘Réplique’ and ‘Papillons’, for the eyes of the performer alone. Complicit with both composer and audience, Naoumoff both recreates Schumann's musical imagination and lets the listener in on its secrets.