216. Schumann’s Salon

Work for voice and piano by Schumann performed by Mark Padmore, tenor and Jonathan Biss, piano on October 12, 2014 and work for string quartet by Schumann performed by Musicians from Marlboro on March 17, 2013

Schumann: Sechs Gedichte und Requiem, Op. 90

Schumann: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 41, No. 2

Today’s podcast features two chamber pieces by Robert Schumann, the type of music you might have heard in a Romantic-era salon. We begin with a song cycle—the form that was Schumann’s bread and butter. Schumann wrote more than 400 songs, or lieder, in his lifetime, and he is widely acknowledged as a master of the genre. The set we’ll hear today is Sechs Gedichte und Requiem, Schumann’s opus 90. The cycle consists of six poems by Nikolaus Lenau, an Austrian poet, and a contemporary of Schumann’s. The seventh movement “Requiem” is a text of mourning written by another poet. The string quartet we’ll hear dates from 1842 when he turned his attention to chamber music and his first three string quartets. We’ll hear his opus 41, number 2, the String Quartet in F Major which has more than its fair share of creativity, making it a rewarding listen, even though it was Schumann’s very first effort in the string quartet form. Our string quartet on this recording hails from Musicians from Marlboro. We’ll start with the song cycle, performed by tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Jonathan Biss.