Bilder aus Osten, Op.66

Lebhaft (Lively)

Nicht schnell und sehr gesangvoll zu spielen (Not fast and very songful)

Im Volkston (Like a folksong)

Nicht schnell (Not fast)

Lebhaft (Lively)

Reuig, andächtig (Rueful, devout)

Considering that Schumann was wedded not only to the piano but also to one of the outstanding pianists of the day, it is surprising how little he wrote for four hands. When he gave the Bilder aus Osten piano duets to Clara as a Christmas present in 1848 he had written nothing of the kind since his student days and he was to complete only three more such works - all of them for children - in the six remaining years of his composing career.

The inspiration for the Bilder aus Osten (“Pictures from the East”) was the Makamen des Hariri, Friedrich Rückert’s translation of a medieval epic devoted to the adventures of Abu Seid, a kind of Arab Till Eulenspiegel, and his friend Hareth. Reluctant as ever to be regarded as a composer of programme music, Schumann declared that only the last of the six Impromptus (as they are described on the title page) was directly based on an episode in the Makemen. But he did attribute the “unusual character” of some the pieces to the fact the he couldn’t help thinking of Abu Seid and Hareth as he wrote them. The Lebhaft first Impromptu in B flat minor, urgent in manner and exotic in both figuration and harmonic colouring, must surely be a case in point.

The second and third Impromptus were apparently conceived structurally, as a pair, rather than descriptively. The qualities they have in common, their modest dimensions and their D flat major tonality, are effectively offset by their contrasting personalities: an intimate expression of nostalgia is followed by a cheerful and ever accelerating march. The fourth piece is also short but seems, in its easy-going characterization and its emotional transition from B flat minor at the beginning to B flat major at the end, to have some poetic purpose behind it - as its later reappearance surely confirms.

In the meantime the fifth Impromptu takes its place as the most substantial piece in the set, a kind of scherzo, driven by obsessive dotted rhythms in the F minor outer sections and comparatively relaxed in the F major middle section. According to Schumann, the sixth and last Impromptu represents an episode in the Makamen “in which we see the hero, rueful and repentant, approach the end of his life.” Abu Seid’s last memory relates to the experience behind the fourth Impromptu in B flat minor, or so the closing bars suggest as they quietly recall that piece in their approach to a serene ending in B flat major.