Nine Pieces from Bunte Blätter, Op.99

Drei Stücklein:

Nicht schnell, mit Innigkeit

Sehr rasch

Frisch

Albumblätter:

Ziemlich langsam

Schnell

Ziemlich langsam, sehr gesangvoll

Sehr langsam

Präludium: Energisch

Albumblatt: Langsam

When Schumann began to round up his stray piano pieces - he assembled thirty-four of them in all, issuing them in two collections in 1851 and 1854 respectively - he must have sensed that he did not have very long to put his affairs in order. Certainly, by the time the second set, the Albumblätter, Op.124, was published he had thrown himself into the Rhine in Düsseldorf and, but for the prompt action of fishermen in a nearby boat, would have succeeded in drowning himself. Within five days of that event he was in the asylum at Endenich where he was to remain until his death two years later.

The piano pieces themselves, the earliest of which dates from 1832, are representative of happier times. Written for various purposes and set aside for various reasons, they were too good to throw away but, for the most part, too short to publish in their own right. They needed a context, even if only some loosely organised anthology. Schumann’s original intention was to publish the first of the two collections under the title Spreu (or “Chaff”) which, not unnaturally, his publisher rejected. Then, to give the pieces a more precise kind of context, he thought of grouping like with like and presenting the different groups in different-coloured covers. Although that idea was also abandoned, the title that went with it, Bunte Blätter (“Coloured Leaves”), was retained.

The Drei Stücklein (“Three Little Pieces”), which were to have been in a green group, seem to be associated with Clara in one way or another. The exquisitely tender first piece was originally dedicated “to my beloved bride for Christmas Eve 1838” and the second, with its passionate allusions to the theme he always associated with her, obviously has some similarly intimate significance. The third is a brief reminder of the Davidsbündlertänze Schumann wrote to celebrate their engagement in 1837.

Also a Clara inspiration, the first piece in the next group, Albumblätter (or “Album Leaves”) is so attractively and so briefly expressed that it cries out for variation treatment. Indeed, Clara Schumann herself wrote a series of variations on it (Op.20) in 1853 and so did their mutual friend Johannes Brahms (Op.9) a year later. Brahms’s Schumann Variations also make a passing reference to the next piece, a characteristic nocturnal adventure in B minor. The melodious slow waltz in A flat major, clearly once intended for Carnaval, makes a happy contrast with its haunted predecessor.

There is a similar contrast between the last two pieces in the group, both of them from 1838: a seriously thoughtful study in three-part counterpoint, which conceals its G flat minor tonality almost to the end, is followed in Schumann’s ordering by a no less thoughtful but rather more charming impromptu in E flat major. But before turning to the second of this pair of Albumblätter with its delightfully coquettish closing bars, Dmitri Alexeev will play one of the six not quite so intimate pieces which come at the end of the Bunte Blätter collection. Although it is said to have been put together from the remains of two abandoned fugues, the Präludium is a single burst of energy running in close parallel to the impulsive beginning of the Fantasy in C major, Op.17, of 1838.