Carnaval, op. 9 (orchestrated by Ravel)

The seeds for the piano suite Carnaval were planted in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, the musical magazine founded and run by Schumann from 1834-44. He and his colleagues idealistically dedicated the journal to the highest standards of art--German standards, in other words, championing Beethoven, Bach, and the young Brahms in a musical culture more interested in Italian bel canto opera and flashy, crowd-pleasing French piano virtuosi. The Davidsbündler, or league of David, was Schumann’s name for this set of friends, battling heroically in print against musical Philistinism both onstage and in the audience. The composer signed many of his reviews under two further pseudonyms, which he saw as representing two side of his personality, two alter egos: Florestan, passionate and impulsive, and Eusebius, introspective and contemplative. This role-playing continues in Carnaval, composed in 1834-35. The brief movements represent figures at a masked ball--Florestan and Eusebius among them, with contemporary composers and stock commedia dell’arte characters filling out the guest list. Further musical symbolism is found in the set of notes Schumann drew on to build many of the themes of the suite, subtitled “Little scenes on four notes”: The letters A-S-C-H, in German notation, represent A, E flat, C, and B natural. Asch was the hometown of Ernestine von Fricken, a fellow piano student of Schumann’s with whom he was briefly infatuated. As it happens, these four letters are the only four in Schumann’s last name that represent musical notes; also, the German word for “carnival” is Fasching. The code is revealed in a movement titled “Sphinxes,” which appears in the score but is not intended to be played. Ernestine herself appears, disguised as “Estrella”; present too is “Chiarina,” or Clara Wieck, Schumann’s eventual wife. Clara, a magnificent pianist whose tastes were as idealistic and high-minded as his, proselytized enthusiastically for Carnaval, though Schumann warned her that the suite wasn’t for everybody: “You often play the Carnaval to people who know nothing at all about me . . . one piece always counteracts the last, a thing which everyone does not appreciate.” She did play it, we know, in 1840 for Franz Liszt, impressing him mightily. In the final movement, the entire gang appears, in the “March of the Davidsbündler Against the Philistines”--a Philistine, perhaps, being anyone who might obtusely object that this march is in three-quarter time. In 1910, Carnaval was choreographed for a ballet for a production by Sergei Diaghilev, with orchestrations by Alexander Glazunov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Tcherepnin. Among others who have orchestrated Carnaval are Maurice Ravel (1914).

Composer

	Robert Schumann

Concert movement for Piano and Orchestra

coming soon

Composer

	Clara Wieck Schumann

Soloist

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott is a consummate artist who balances a versatile career as a soloist and collaborator. She performs over 100 concerts a year in a combination of solo recitals, concerti and chamber music. Her repertoire choices are eclectic, spanning from Bach and Haydn to Prokofiev and Scriabin to Kernis, Hartke, Tower and Wuorinen. McDermott debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1997 under Christian Thielemann and has since appeared with the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. In the 2008-2009 season, McDermott will perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, Alabama Symphony, San Diego Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. A winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions, McDermott was also the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Development Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, the Joseph Kalichstein Piano Prize, the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Bruce Hungerford Memorial Prize, and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists. McDermott has recorded the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, Bach English Suites and Partitas (named Gramophone Magazine’s Editor’s Choice), and Gershwin Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony and Justin Brown. McDermott began playing the piano at age 5. By 12 she had performed the Mendelssohn Concerto in G minor with the National Orchestral Association at Carnegie Hall. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship student with Dalmo Carra, Constance Keene and John Browning.

Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54

Schumann, an excellent pianist, conceived this concerto as early as 1833, and his vision for the work strayed little from his initial impulse. In a letter that year to Friedrich Wieck, his piano teacher--and father of his wife-to-be, Clara--he wrote, " I think the Piano Concerto ought to be in C major or A minor." And in 1839, he wrote to Clara of the projected work, "It is something between a symphony, a concerto, and a big sonata. I feel that I cannot write a concerto for the virtuoso, I must think of something else"--and indeed the piece, though difficult, is not a show-off work. It's about lyricism, not fireworks. The piano part weaves itself among the orchestra--rather than engaging it in battle, with the soloist and orchestral mass opposed for dramatic effect, a favorite schema for concerto composers. Such were not Clara's tastes, and Robert probably had the concerto in mind for her all along. An arguably even greater pianist, she premiered the work. Robert finally got down to work in 1841, composing the first movement as a free-standing work titled Phantasie. It's often been observed that Schumann worked in phases, dashing off several works in the same genre in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration, then turning his attention to a completely different one. Thus one year in his composing career concentrated on songs, another on chamber music; 1841 was an orchestral year, and Schumann had just finished his "Spring" Symphony and the mini-symphony he called Overture, Scherzo, and Finale when he leapt into action on the Phantasie and, days later, finished that and began his Symphony in D Minor. Eventually he was persuaded by Clara to add two movements to the Phantasie, which he did in May and July 1845. Notes by Gavin Borchert.

Composer

	Robert Schumann

Soloist

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott is a consummate artist who balances a versatile career as a soloist and collaborator. She performs over 100 concerts a year in a combination of solo recitals, concerti and chamber music. Her repertoire choices are eclectic, spanning from Bach and Haydn to Prokofiev and Scriabin to Kernis, Hartke, Tower and Wuorinen. McDermott debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1997 under Christian Thielemann and has since appeared with the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. In the 2008-2009 season, McDermott will perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, Alabama Symphony, San Diego Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. A winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions, McDermott was also the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Development Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, the Joseph Kalichstein Piano Prize, the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Bruce Hungerford Memorial Prize, and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists. McDermott has recorded the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, Bach English Suites and Partitas (named Gramophone Magazine’s Editor’s Choice), and Gershwin Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony and Justin Brown. McDermott began playing the piano at age 5. By 12 she had performed the Mendelssohn Concerto in G minor with the National Orchestral Association at Carnegie Hall. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship student with Dalmo Carra, Constance Keene and John Browning.