In concert – Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton @ Wigmore Hall – Album für die Frau: Eight scenes from the Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann

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Carolyn Sampson Photo: Marco Borggeve

Carolyn Sampson (soprano, above), Joseph Middleton (piano, below)

Songs and piano music by Robert and Clara Schumann – full list at bottom of review

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 14 February 2024

by Ben Hogwood Photos by Marco Borggreve (Carolyn Sampson) and Sussie Ahlberg (Joseph Middleton)

This was a Valentine’s Day concert with a difference. No orchestra, no Romeo & Juliet – but rather an intimate presentation of a musical marriage, that of composer / pianists Robert and Clara Schumann, whose relationship has been increasingly under the microscope in the past few years.

This is a good thing, for when Robert and Clara married on 12 September 1840 the concept of equality within marriage, let alone classical music, was very different indeed. Robert, in the outpouring of song that he experienced in that year, completed the song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, to poetry by Adelbert von Chamisso attempting a depiction of marriage from a woman’s perspective. It is certainly not how we recognise the institution of marriage today, which soprano Carolyn Sampson acknowledged in a Guardian article around the release of her Album für die Frau, the title of this concert, in 2021. In that article she put forward a strong case for continuing to sing the cycle, identifying with a good deal of the verse and even more of the music – but with her musical partner, pianist Joseph Middleton, she has recast the cycle.

Now the Schumanns’ marriage is given in four parts – love, marriage, parenthood and death – viewed through the prism of Frauenliebe but balanced through songs by Clara and Robert, or one of the latter’s piano pieces. Each song from the cycle had two accomplices, the context achieved through what must have been a painstaking selection process that, in this concert, bore much fruit. The coherent end piece was bisected by well-chosen text from the couple’s diaries and more.

With sadness inevitably looming towards the end it was a difficult structure for the duo to pitch, but they made it work through selections that made emotional sense and which, crucially, were harmonically linked. Sampson’s clarity of line was the clincher, her ability to carry not just a melody but the words with great diction, while the same could be said of Middleton’s phrasing, which as Sampson said in the introduction ‘could express what words cannot’. The postlude from Frauenliebe was the keenest example, exquisitely played.

The song cycle itself contained a great deal of emotion, especially in Du Ring an meinem Finger (You ring on my finger), where Sampson’s powerful crescendo was all-consuming. Clara’s songs proved the ideal complement, a little more Schubertian in style perhaps but harmonically more daring, often ending in suspension.

The first half included five settings of Rückert and felt slightly giddy in the intoxication of falling in love and wedded bliss, almost too good to be true – and so it proved, with the settings of Heinrich Heine bringing with them furrowed brows and family responsibilities, the music increasingly worrisome. Robert and Clara had eight children in all, and this section gave a glimpse of the weight of responsibility that would surely have left.

The masterstroke of this program, however, was not to finish with the end of the song cycle but to offer Robert’s Requiem, from his 6 Gedichte von N Laneu und Requiem Op.90, as a much-needed consolation, then the piano piece Winterzeit I, from the Album für die Jugend. Finally, as an encore, Clara’s Abendstern, a beautiful postscript with her love taken up to the stars, turned our gaze upwards once more.

It capped an unexpectedly moving account of two lives intertwined, offering a timely reminder of Clara’s torment at her husband’s untimely demise. One of the power couples of 19th century music they must have been, but this was a tender account of two lives entwined and enriched by beautiful song.

You can hear Album für die Frau, as released on BIS, below:

Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton performed the following music:

Robert Schumann Langsam und mit Ausdruck zu spielen from Album für die Jugend Op. 68 (piano, 1848)
Clara Schumann Liebst du um Schönheit Op. 12 No. 2 (1841)
Robert Schumann Seit ich ihn gesehen from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42 (1840)
Volksliedchen Op. 51 No. 2 (1840)
Clara Schumann Liebeszauber Op. 13 No. 3 (1840-3)
Robert Schumann Er, der Herrlichste von allen from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Clara Schumann An einem lichten Morgen from 6 Lieder aus Jucunde Op. 23 (1853)
Warum willst du and’re fragen Op. 12 No. 3 (1841)
Robert Schumann Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Clara Schumann Die stille Lotosblume Op. 13 No. 6 (1840-3)
Robert Schumann Du Ring an meinem Finger from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
From Myrthen Op. 25 (1840): Lied der Braut I • Lied der Braut II
Glückes genug from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano, 1838)
Interval
Robert Schumann
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Die Lotosblume from Myrthen Op. 25
Lust der Sturmnacht from Kerner Lieder Op. 35 (1840)
Süsser Freund, du blickest from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Hochländisches Wiegenlied from Myrthen Op. 25
Der Sandmann from Lieder-Album für die Jugend Op. 79 (1849)
Kind im Einschlummern from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano)
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Ritter vom Steckenpferd from Kinderszenen Op. 15 (piano)
Dein Angesicht Op. 127 No. 2 (1840)
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan from Frauenliebe und -leben Op. 42
Requiem from 6 Gedichte von N Lenau und Requiem Op. 90 (1850)
Winterzeit I from Album für die Jugend Op. 68 (piano)
Clara Schumann
Abendstern

Published post no.2,088 – Thursday 15 February 2024

On paper – Composing Myself by Sir Andrzej Panufnik (Collected Writings, Volume One)

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Composing Myself
by Sir Andrzej Panufnik
(Collected Writings, Volume One)
Toccata Press [477pp, hardback, illustrated, ISBN 978-0-907689-90-4, £80]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Press continues its estimable ‘Musicians on Music’ series with this New Edition of Composing Myself – the autobiography of Andrzej Panufnik, first published (by Methuen) in 1987, now reissued with many new annotations, photographs and an end-piece by his widow.

What’s the book like?

Panufnik’s life – taking in the unsettled formative period of his youth, traumatic years with Nazi then Soviet occupation of Warsaw and takeover by communist forces loyal to Moscow, then rigid Stalinization of Polish culture on Socialist Realist lines resulting in his defection to the UK – would make a compelling film, and it typifies this composer’s unwavering integrity he pointedly eschews sensationalism or false emotion in its relating. Moreover, such measured objectivity is enhanced by his tangible evoking of an era cruelly obliterated while resulting in the death of his brother and destruction of all his music. The era of his emergence as Poland’s leading composer and conductor, but also a pawn at the hands of his political ‘masters’, is no less absorbing. Panufnik’s subsequent life – his struggle for recognition in an adopted country where his music fell-foul of officialdom while finding favour with conductors such as Leopold Stokowski and Jascha Horenstein – runs parallel to his evolving a mature idiom and, with the support of his second wife Camilla Jessel, the creative renaissance of his last quarter-century.

Panufnik’s text, left unaltered from 36 years before, is rounded out with explanatory footnotes – by Toccata MD Martin Anderson and the composer’s widow – that fill in a background often unclear or conjectural when Poland was still under communist rule. Almost all his friends or colleagues from the pre-war era are accorded brief but pertinent biographies, but the absence of information about his first wife Marie Elizabeth O’Mahoney (Scarlett Panufnik) after the breakdown of their marriage and divorce in 1959 is surprising (she died in seeming obscurity in 1984). There is an effusive Preface by Simon Callow, contextual Editorial Introduction by Anderson and, most valuably, a Postscriptum by Lady Panufnik. This takes the narrative from 1987 with the composer working on his most ambitious work, the Ninth Symphony, through a further 14 years as saw further high-profile premieres and recordings of almost all his major works before his untimely death in 1991. A late addition details the crucial role of MI6 officer (later MP) Neil Marten in Paunfnik’s escaping Polish ‘minders’ while in Switzerland in 1954.

Is it worth reading?

Absolutely. Panufnik’s being a significant cultural figure as well as a major composer should commend this book to anyone at all interested in the history of post-war Europe. Along with almost all those previously reproduced, this new edition features a host of photos unknown or not available in 1987 and which complement the narrative unerringly. This book is otherwise produced to Toccata’s customary high standards, with an index of works and a general index. Specific information on each piece can be found at Panufnik’s dedicated website (see below).

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The book is Volume One of Panufnik’s collected writings, its successor intended to collate the composer’s articles on music and culture together with his numerous programme notes. Hopefully this can be published in time for the 35th anniversary of his death in 2026.

For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Toccata Classics website

Listening to Beethoven #226 – 6 Ecossaises WoO83

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Design for a Beethoven commemorative coin for 5 German marks, 1969 – photograph of an unmarked model

6 Ecossaises WoO83 for piano (c1806, Beethoven aged 35)

Dedication unknown
Duration 2″

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by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

The general Wikipedia definition for an Ecossaise is ‘an energetic country dance in duple time in which couples form lines facing each other’. Keith Anderson, writing notes for Naxos, states that ‘the so-called Scottish dance was, in fact, a form of contredanse, a product of French imagination’.

Beethoven wrote a small number of these dances for piano, and according to the brief notes for the DG Beethoven Edition, ‘some of these were intended to be used in ballrooms to accompany actual dancing, as seems to have been the case with the ecossaises and waltzes WoO83-86.’

These examples were published in 1807, though there is some doubt over their authenticity.

Thoughts

These lively dances are a lot of fun – and Beethoven shows that even in supposedly minor works like this, he is still capable of writing a tune that will stay in the head. It is the refrain that ends the first dance, and then comes back for a repeat after each of the six little variant dances.

Anyone who had ventured on to the dance floor at the sound of the first dance will surely have stayed for the duration, and hoped for more of the same in successive works!

Recordings used and Spotify playlist

Ronald Brautigam (BIS)
Jenó Jandó (Naxos)
Olli Mustonen (Decca)
Alfred Brendel (Vox)
Wilhelm Kempff (DG)
Martino Tirimo (Hänssler)

Some lively recordings here, and some notably different approaches. Martino Tirimo is curiously stilted, while Brendel, Kempff and Jenó Jandó are typically elegant. Ronald Brautigam is brisk and lively, his dancers whirling around in circles.

Also written in 1806 Hummel 12 Minuets

Next up String Quartet no.7 in F major Op.59/1

On Record – Manu Delago: Snow From Yesterday (One Little Independent)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

For his new album, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Manu Delago has teamed up with the vocal ensemble Mad About Lemon and a group of other players to present a concept album.

Snow From Yesterday forms a direct connection with the environment, examining the life cycle in all its stages, in close-up intimacy or panning out for widescreen views of the global climate.

What’s the music like?

This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking album, one that often proceeds like a conversation between composer and listener.

Mad About Lemon help greatly with this, their direct lyrics simply delivered but leaving a mark with unanswered questions and observations. Modern People pits the three part close harmony of the three ensemble members Heidi Erler, Mimi Schmid and Anna Widauer together with handpans, its lyrics already considering the stages of life from when ‘the first chicken laid an egg’. Polar Bear notes of how ‘once upon a time, Greenland was white’. Stay Afloat has a darker global overtone, the vocalists intoning the names of big cities with industrial sounds circling ominously.

Musically it is Delago’s widest ranging record yet. As well as the vocals there are colourful contributions from brass ensemble, where Dominik Fuss (flugelhorn), Alois Eberl (trombone and bass trumpet), Christina Lachberger (trombone) and Simon Teurezbacher (tuba) add rich colours. These are often successful, with intricate part writing on Ode To Earth, and a softly voiced coda to Paintings On The Wall beautifully realised. Just occasionally, however, the lines can meander, as they do on Oxygen.

Clarinettist Christoph Pepe Auer adds soft tones to Little Heritage, where he is complemented by the sounds of a baby, while double bassist Clemens Rofner adds greater depth to the sound. Yet perhaps the most affecting track is the simplest, Immersion pitting the handpan against electronics to lasting effect.

Does it all work?

Mostly. On occasion – and especially if the listener is not in the mood – the sentiments can sound a little precious. But this is a very carefully thought-out album, and one where Delago’s feelings about the earth and its direction are realised with a great deal of emotion. The performances are on point, too – Mad About Lemon sing beautifully, and the instrumentalists show a rare sensitivity in their playing.

Is it recommended?

It is. This is Manu Delago’s bravest artistic statement to date, an ambitious work that leaves a powerful impact. A record to grow with and to return to, that’s for sure.

For fans of… Anoushka Shankar, Ólafur Arnalds, Portico Quartet

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Published post no.2,085 – Monday 12 February 2024

Listening to Beethoven #225 – 32 Variations in C minor WoO80

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Oil painting of Beethoven by Isidor Neugass in the collection of Prince Lichnowsky, 1806

32 Variations in C minor WoO80 for piano (1806, Beethoven aged 35)

Dedication unknown
Duration 11’30”

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by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

1806 was proving to be an extremely productive year for Beethoven. So much so that Jan Swafford, in his biography of the composer, talks of it as a ‘minor work’, which Beethoven ‘dashed off and forgot about’. He failed even to recognise them in public when the daughter of the piano maker Streicher played them.

For Lewis Lockwood, the variations ‘belong to a group of ‘heroic’ works written in 1806’. He describes the ‘standard Baroque passacaglia theme’, and how ’every variation except the last is equally brief, making the work a parade of short, brilliant pianistic transformations in the same rigorously maintained length and form.’ Beethoven’s contemporary, Carl Czerny, was impressed, who recommended that ‘since the theme is short, this work is best performed in public for a thinking public’.

32 variations was an inordinately high number of variations, almost certainly the most any composer had used in a single piece at that time. Lockwood notes that this may have acted as a spur when Beethoven outdid himself by one more variations when writing his great Diabelli opus later in life.

Thoughts

This certainly doesn’t sound like a minor work, at any point!

Beethoven casts an imposing theme, in spite of its brevity, sharply dotted like the beginning of a baroque overture. Stabbed, repeated notes means we fly through the first variations (1-3), and Beethoven almost gestures for the listener to keep up as he proceeds on his way with incredibly fluent composition, the variations easily but indelibly linked.

The massive seven-note chords to Variation 6 show the scale on which he was thinking for the pianist, though after a flurry of notes there is a rare note of calm as C major arrives for Variation 12. The next four variations proceed in the major key, as the compelling arguments continue – before we return to the minor key and some remarkable outbursts and figurations, straining at the link with almost unbridled fury.

The whirlwind of inspiration includes passages reminiscent of the Pathétique and Waldstein sonatas, before the variations finish almost as quickly as they arrived, signing off with a cheeky pianissimo for the last two chords.

Recordings used and Spotify playlist

Cécile Ousset (Eloquence)
Rudolf Buchbinder (Teldec)
Ronald Brautigam (BIS)
Emil Gilels (EMI)
Olli Mustonen (Decca)
Angela Hewitt (Hyperion)

There are some very fine recordings of these variations, from Angela Hewitt, Mitsuko Uchida and Rudolf Buchbinder. Two, however, stand proud – the magisterial Emil Gilels, typically masterful in performance and execution, and Cécile Ousset, a performance of great character and flair as part of her wonderful collection of Beethoven variations. The work is much-loved and a great concert piece, too.

Also written in 1806 Hummel 7 Hungarian Dances

Next up 6 Ecossaises WoO83