Schumann: Dichterliebe, Op. 48 (Century's record.: Charles Panzéra, Alfred Cortot / 1935 Remastered)

Album available // Schumann: Dichterliebe Op. 48 by Charles Panzéra & Alfred Cortot 🔥🎧 Choose music service: https://lnk.to/schumannliederpanzera 🎧 Qobuz https://cutt.ly/9yYOBDsI Apple Music https://cutt.ly/1yYONrxI 🎧 Tidal https://cutt.ly/GyYOB0kx Amazon Music https://cutt.ly/iyYONIUt 🎧 Deezer https://cutt.ly/3yYONCEA Spotify https://cutt.ly/LyYON7Ye 🎧 Youtube Music https://cutt.ly/AyYOMmeF COMPLETE TRACKLIST: COMING SOON Maurice TASSART: « As an adolescent, Robert Schumann had long hesitated between music and literature. His early works include a number of short piano pieces, and even a Psalm for orchestra and chorus, but also three plays and two novels. Even after he had finally chosen music and abandoned his law studies, this bookseller’s son remained a writer. Like his contemporaries Berlioz and Wagner (born seven years before and three years after him, respectively), he remained a journalist and essayist throughout his life. As the founder and driving force behind the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and the author of numerous works of criticism and aesthetics, he had an intimate knowledge of the Romantic movement in both its literary and musical manifestations. Of the dual personality he himself embodied in the contrasting characters of the gentle Eusebius and the fiery Florestan, it seems that the former was more particularly associated with his musical nature, while he entrusted the latter with the analytical mind, combative instinct, and sharp pen that characterize polemicists. This duality at the heart of Schumann’s nature largely explains his admiration for Heinrich Heine. The great German poet was himself both a lyric poet and a satirist; his most sublime flights of feeling are often tinged with humor, sometimes with a distinctly biting edge. When Schumann was eighteen, he met Heine in person in Munich during a student holiday, in the company of his friend Rosen. He retained a glowing memory of that encounter, to which he would allude twelve years later when sending the poet a copy of the songs he had just set to music: “Writing these lines to satisfy a long-standing and persistent desire to draw a little closer to you, I must acknowledge that you have probably forgotten the visit I paid you in Munich many years ago, when I was still a very young man. I hope you will enjoy the music I have composed to your songs... A word from you letting me know whether this parcel has reached you safely would fill me with joy.” (*) That “word” never came. We should not be too quick to accuse Heine of treating Schumann as Goethe had treated Schubert. Perhaps the promised volume never reached its destination, since in 1843 the poet complained that he had “not received a single copy of the several hundred songs” composed in Germany to his works. Schumann would retain some bitterness over this silence and would thereafter make only occasional use of his favorite poet’s works. Nevertheless, Heine stands far ahead of all the other poets who inspired him: thirty-eight songs out of a total of two hundred and forty-eight. And of those thirty-eight, sixteen make up Dichterliebe. It is difficult to say why French tradition has rendered this title in the plural, when in German it is singular. The Poet’s Love is taken from the Buch der Lieder, more specifically from the Lyrisches Intermezzo. Here, as in La bonne chanson, we are not dealing with a collection of unrelated songs grouped together into an “opus” merely for publication purposes. The subject—the torments of a poet in love—is treated so completely and so fully that one might almost think Heine had deliberately collaborated with Schumann. The music illustrates the text in an impressionistic manner, without any unnecessary embellishment, yet with symphonic extensions that enrich the melodic color. The very subject of the collection suggests that the selection and ordering of the pieces were the work of Eusebius rather than Florestan. It is nevertheless remarkable that Dichterliebe, along with more than half of all Schumann’s songs, was composed in the first months of 1840, a period of struggle, but of struggle crowned with victory. The composer was thirty years old. Since 1835, he had been in love with the young pianist Clara Wieck, an already celebrated virtuoso and the daughter of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck. Clara returned his love, but her father did not want a son-in-law without wealth or a secure future. Perhaps he was also troubled by signs of mental instability that had already appeared in Robert Schumann. Alas, the future would prove him right on this point. No less stubborn than the old Wieck, Robert and Clara eventually took their case to court, where they won their legal battle on August 1, 1840. They would marry on September 12, Clara Schumann’s twenty-first birthday. She would outlive Robert by forty years and become the most tireless champion of his music. »