Angela Brownridge - Schumann: Album for the Young '2000

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 1, Melodie
02. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 2, Soldatenmarsch
03. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 3, Trällerliedchen
04. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 4, Ein Choral
05. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 5, Stückchen
06. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 6, Armes Waisenkind
07. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 7, Jägerliedchen
08. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 8, Wilder Reiter
09. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 9, Volksliedchen
10. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 10, Fröhlicher Landmann, von der
Arbeit zurückkehrend
11. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 11, Sizilianisch
12. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 12, Knecht Ruprecht
13. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 13, Mai, lieber Mai
14. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 14, Kleine Studie
15. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 15, Frühlingsgesang
16. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 16, Erster Verlust
17. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 17, Kleiner Morgenwanderer
18. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 18, Schnitterliedchen
19. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 19, Kleine Romanze
20. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 20, Ländliches Lied
21. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 21 in C Major
22. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 22, Rundgesang
23. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 23, Reiterstück
24. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 24, Ernteliedchen
25. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 25, Nachklänge aus dem Theater
26. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 26 in F Major
27. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 27, Kanonisches Liedchen
28. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 28, Erinnerung
29. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 29, Fremder Mann
30. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 30 in F Minor
31. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 31, Kriegslied
32. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 32, Sheherazade
33. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 33, Weinlesezeit – Fröhliche
Zeit!
34. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 34, Thema
35. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 35, Mignon
36. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 36, Lied italienischer Marinari
37. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 37, Matrosenlied
38. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 38, Winterzeit I
39. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 39, Winterzeit II
40. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 40, Kleine Fuge
41. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 41, Nordisches Lied
42. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 42, Figurierter Choral
43. Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 43, Silvesterlied

Though Bach, Mozart and others had written music for young and inexpert
performers, Schumann was the first great composer to penetrate imaginatively
into the world of children. The earliest of his works to evoke childhood was
Kinderszenen (‘Scenes of Childhood’) of 1838, whose tender
portraits of a carefree innocence are intimately bound up with his longing for
Clara Wieck. But, though technically undemanding, the Kinderszenen are
essentially adults’ music, in Schumann’s words
‘reminiscences of a grown-up for grown-ups’. Ten years later, now
married to Clara and with three daughters, Schumann composed his Album for the
Young, a collection of forty-three miniatures written specifically for children.
The first pieces were intended as a birthday present for his eldest daughter,
Marie, who was seven on 1 September 1848; then, as Schumann wrote to a friend,
‘one after another was added’, with a gradual increase in
difficulty. As an entry in Clara’s family diary reveals, Schumann was
encouraged to produce an extended collection of pieces for children by the
thought that most of the music learned in piano lessons was worthless; and his
didactic purpose is underlined by his original intention of supplementing the
pieces with extracts from other composers’ works, and by the list of
musical maxims (Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln) which he added to the
second, 1851, edition of the Album. These include such pungently worded precepts
as ‘Don’t just tinkle at the keys!’ and ‘Play
rhythmically! Many virtuosi sound like a drunkard walking! Don’t imitate
them!’
The Album falls into two parts, with the first eighteen pieces designed for
young children and the later numbers for ‘more grown-up’ players.
But even in the last pieces Schumann shields his pianists from the more
difficult keys: nowhere does he venture beyond three flats or four sharps.
Perhaps surprisingly, all the pieces are in duple (2/4 and 4/4) or compound
duple (6/8) time. But Schumann creates a wealth of rhythmic diversity within his
self-imposed limitations, and monotony only creeps in when all the pieces are
dutifully played one after the other—a notion which would surely have
horrified the composer.

It is only to be expected that the first, and simplest, pieces, written
expressly for Marie, should contain little of the poetry found in many of the
later ones. Each is designed to highlight a particular technical
point—legato and staccato playing, dotted rhythms and so on. But
Schumann’s love of cryptic allusions could well lie behind the very
opening of the first piece, whose descending five-note scale had come to assume
a special significance in his work, closely associated with his love for Clara.
A different kind of allusion occurs in Soldaten­marsch
(‘Soldiers’ March’), whose initial bars recreate in duple
time the beginning of the Scherzo in Beethoven’s ‘Spring’
Sonata for violin and piano. The fourth piece, Ein Choral, designed to develop a
smooth legato, is a simple harmoniza­tion of the chorale ‘Rejoice O my
soul’ used by Bach and others; Schumann is to treat the same melody much
more elaborately in No 42, Figurierter Choral. A more lively note is introduced
with the ‘Little Hunting Song’ (Jägerliedchen, No 7), with its
buoyant 6/8 metre and crisp staccato writing, while the following number, Wilder
Reiter (‘The Wild Rider’), in similar metre, is the first to
entrust part of the melodic line to the left hand.

One of the most touching of the early numbers is ‘Little Folksong’
(Volksliedchen, No 9), which contrasts mournful D minor music with a dance-like
centrepiece in D major. Here Schumann is already demanding sharp emotional
responses from his young players. A similar acute characterization is needed for
No 12 (Knecht Ruprecht), with its eerie unisons in the depths of the keyboard
and adventurously modulating central episode. (The ‘Knecht
Ruprecht’ of the title is, in German folklore, the mischievous helper of
Santa Claus.) In complete contrast are the two delightful numbers which evoke
spring: No 13, Mai, lieber Mai, the first of several pieces in the Album to
suggest Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, and the more inward-looking
and chromatic No 15, Frühlings­gesang, where the soft pedal is used to
deepen the music’s rapt contemplation.

The second part of the Album opens with ‘Little Romance’ (Kleine
Romanze), whose melodic shape, texture and faint sense of agitation again call
to mind Mendelssohn. Several of the more boisterous numbers in Part Two carry
descriptive titles similar to those in the first part, though the music is now
more intricately worked. Especially characterful are ‘The
Horse­man’ (Reiterstück, No 23) with its magical coda fading into
the distance; ‘Echoes of the Theatre’ (Nachklänge aus dem
Theater, No 25), which imitates various sounds of the orchestra; and No 36, Lied
italienischer Marinari (‘Italian Sailor’s Song’), with its
fiery tarantella rhythms. But Schumann dispenses with picturesque childlike
rides for the more reflective numbers which predominate in the second part of
the Album. These include two numbers with literary associ­ations (Sheherazade
and Mignon, with their exquisite veiled sonorities) and two in which Schumann
pays tribute to fellow composers: No 28,
Erinnerung—‘Remembrance’ (with its allusion, quite possibly
intentional, to the song ‘Dein Bildnis wunderselig’ from the Op 39
Liederkreis), which is dedicated to the memory of Mendelssohn, who had died in
November 1847; and Nordisches Lied (‘Northern Song’, No 41),
sub­titled ‘Greetings to Niels Gade’ in which the first four
notes G-A-D-E represent the Danish composer’s name.

Among those pieces which bear no extra-musical des­cription, the three
untitled numbers (21, 26 and 30) are in Schumann’s most intimate lyrical
vein. Another Beethoven allusion, this time to the trio ‘Euch werde
Lohn’ from Fidelio, occurs in the searching, harmonically subtle No 21.

Even finer is No 30, with its rich textures and yearning chromaticism. Schumann
also includes three pieces designed to introduce the player to various types of
counterpoint. No 27 is a canon at the octave, led first by the right, then by
the left hand, while No 40, Kleine Fuge, takes the form of a moto perpetuo
prelude followed by a fugue whose puckish 6/8 subject is a transformation of the
prelude’s opening phrase. The final contrapuntal number is the
Figurierter Choral, No 42, in which the melody first heard in No 4 is enriched
with flowing counter-melodies. But it is characteristic of the Album that these
contrapuntal pieces should contain nothing of dry pedantry. As in the whole
collection, Schumann’s didactic purpose is balanced by the freshness of
his poetic imagination and the extraordinary sympathy and understanding he shows
for the mind of a child.

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