We’ve all seen the famous portrait of Schumann made late
in his life after Clara had got him dressed up and starched and
on his good behaviour for the photographer. But I have seen two
drawings of Schumann as a college student. If I at that age had
ever met him at that age I’d have run for my life. The wild fire
in those eyes promised adventures, vices and risks beyond anything
I could ever survive (and I’m pretty crazy myself as you’d quickly
find out if you knew me). We imagine Frederick Wieck had heard some
pretty wild stories and was scared to death when his daughter actually
wanted to marry this monster. He shouldn’t have worried; Clara was
Isis incarnate and so much of a mother that eight children, a crazy
husband, and a crazy surrogate lover (Brahms) could scarcely soak
up the greater part of all her motherliness.
Katsaris plays the complete manuscripts of the
Etudes including, apparently, some incomplete sketches,
and times out at 18:13, nearly twice as long as Vorraber. I was
driving somewhere when I first heard the Katsaris recording on
my car radio; at once I forgot all about where I was going and
instead drove directly to the record shop and bought the CD, which
remains my absolute favourite recording of any piece by Schumann.
While listening at home I keep glancing into the shadowy corners
of the room to make sure there are no ghosts. The Vorraber performance
is admirable but does not threaten to raise any shadows. Vorraber
plays only the latest of the three manuscripts, timing at 10.46
minutes. He evidently considers some of this music, which Katsaris
sees as complete and worthy of performance, to be ‘unfinished,’
a curious decision to make for a ‘complete’ set, but then Demus
and Ashkenazy omit these pieces from their sets entirely.
The Albumblätter are twenty miscellaneous
little pieces, sounding much like other miscellaneous little Schumann
pieces; the playing is precise, dramatic, and idiomatic, but at
times I found it hard to keep my attention on them, even though
number 17, ‘Elfe,’ is a marvel of pianistic skill. Some may prefer
these rather cool performances, but I look for those uniquely
Schumann passions in this music and I don’t hear them here.
The Sonata Op. 22 is more interesting and here
better performed than the Op. 124, especially with the original
finale added as an appendix. But while the alternate movement
is interesting, it is also somewhat wayward, and you will probably
prefer the final published version of the sonata. But if what
we hear from Vorraber here in the first movement is truly so
rasch wie möglich, (‘as headstrong as possible’) I’m
crazier than Schumann was. Vorraber plays brilliantly, but rather
too tastefully, without abandon. His cool brilliance is much more
successful in both versions of the fourth movement. Demus plays
with brilliant ferocity. Kempff plays with a just sense of ‘rasch,’
with a lurching, stumbling forward movement, musically dramatic,
but without undue speed. ‘So rasch wie möglich’ is not, as
some dictionaries would have it, ‘so schnell wie möglich’
(as fast as possible).
Herr Vorraber is all smiles on some of the covers
in this series, but on volume 4 he looks solemnly out at us, putting
much effort into looking as though hurtling himself into the Rhine
is one of the things he has thought seriously about doing recently.
I would not want to suggest that Herr Vorraber has no depravity
in his soul; that would be a terrible insult these days, so I’m
sure he is fully capable of being just as depraved as he sets
his mind to be. But I doubt if he has ever travelled to that place
where the birds are dead and heard the thing that yet chirpeth
like a bird, whereas Schumann probably visited there most days
of his life.
My favourite modern Schumann piano recording
is the ADD Kreisleriana by Vladimir Ashkenazy, but until
January 2003 no one had seemed to agree with me as this performance
was not until then made available on CD. While I revere Jörg
Demus as one of the great pianists of the 20th Century, his Schumann
set is a little disappointing, mostly because of indifferent recording
and a piano in need of new strings and hammers. Schumann’s music
most clearly defined the goal for the developers of the modern
concert grand piano, and using an ‘historic’ instrument would
in this case be a mistake.
Schumann had the worst in-law problems imaginable
that started years before the marriage. His fiancée’s father
would scream and spit in Schumann’s face whenever they met by
chance on the street. The elder Wieck repeated loudly a rumour
he had heard, that Schumann was syphilitic. This diagnosis was
also borne out by the attending physician at his death, but has
recently been disputed. It used to be believed that Beethoven
had died of syphilis, but now we know that wasn’t true. Recent
discussions* have suggested that Schumann suffered from three
distinct illnesses: His family suffered from an inherited tendency
to mental instability and early death, and he must have known
this from an early age, which would hardly have improved his morale.
His father died at 52, his three brothers at the ages of 28, 43
and 48, and his sister committed suicide at 19. Robert’s dying
at 46 could be seen as just what he might have expected. Also,
Schumann displayed all the symptoms of bipolar disease, formerly
known as manic-depressive disorder. Finally, Herr Wieck was likely
correct — Schumann did have syphilis. The mercury treatments he
endured prevented him from infecting his wife or children, but
no doubt exacerbated his mental instabilities, and could not save
him from the final onslaught of the tertiary form of the disease.
It’s a pity Schumann was not successful at drowning himself after
his famous leap into the Rhine; for the next two years he suffered
terribly from hallucinations and delusions before death finally
and mercifully released him. That a man who suffered so much was
able to write anything at all is some kind of miracle, and the
fact of its amazing quality makes it even more so. Music must
have been for Schumann a kind of anchor that kept him at least
within hailing distance of sanity.
The only happy note one can find in this story
is that after his failure to stop the wedding, Herr Wieck wrote
Schumann a touching letter of apology and subsequently the whole
family would gather together on holidays and maintain at least
formal conviviality.
Vorraber’s piano is excellent and he attains
better sound than Demus. I feel that both Vorraber and Demus deserve
high marks for splendid attempts but we have yet to hear a fully
satisfactory complete Schumann set. In the meantime it is easy
to console ourselves with the less than complete but extensive
series by Ashkenazy, which also receives excellent recording,
both ADD and DDD.
*Robert Schumann, The Man & His Music,
edited by Alan Walker, 1972.
Paul Shoemaker
Franz Vorraber, piano