7 pieces from Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young) Op. 68 (1848)

Ein Choral (A chorale)

Kleine Studie (Little study)

Kanonisches Liedchen (Little canonic song)

Erinnerung (Memory)

Reiterstück (Rider piece)

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Figurierter Choral (Figured chorale)

In the second edition of Album für die Jugend Schumann presents his pupils with a series of musical “rules,” including such offhand remarks as “Dont’ just tinkle at the keys!” and such earnest advice as “Be industrious in playing fugues by great masters, above all J.S. Bach. Let The Well-Tempered Clavier be your daily bread.” In fact, he could have dedicated the work to Bach, not only because he recognised Bach as “the first to write teaching pieces” nor even because The Well-Tempered Clavier was, as he said, his own “grammar book” but above all because, far from being a musician of the past, Bach was one of “the finest musicians of the future.”

So even in the section of the Album designed for young children Bach is a prominent presence – in the Choral based on “Freue dich, o meine Seele,” for example, and the Kleine Studie with its allusions to the first prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier. From the section for “more grown-up” pupils the present selection offers a Kanonisches Liedchen of clear stylistic derivation, another chorale in the middle section of an intimate piece identified only by three asterisks, and a version of “Freue dich, o meine Seele” with contrapuntal figuration. They are interspersed here with such non-Bach inspirations as Erinnerung (a touching tribute to the recently deceased Felix Mendelssohn), a rhythmically characteristic Reiterstück and a Thema which sounds as though it ought to be followed by a set of variations, although only Novak seems to have accepted the challenge.