Three Romances, Op.94 (1849)

Nicht schnell

Einfach, innig

Nicht schnell

In the first half of 1849 the city of Dresden, where Robert and Clara Schumann had taken a flat in the Waisenhausstrasse four or five years earlier, was in a state of violent political unrest. Far from distracting the composer from his work, however, the situation positively encouraged him to get on with it. "I've been very busy for some time now," Schumann wrote to his colleague Ferdinand Hiller, "It's been my most fruitful year. It’s just as if outward storms drove one more into oneself." Unlike Richard Wagner, he avoided taking an active part in the revolution which definitively broke out in Dresden in May - preferring to take refuge outside the city for six weeks or so - and he did indeed produce a phenomenal amount of high-quality music at this time, little of it affected by events in the world outside.

The Three Romances, Op.94, are a late addition to the series of lyrical chamber works - the Fantasy Pieces, Op.73, the Adagio and Allegro, Op.70, the Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op.102 - written amid the turmoil of the first few months of the year. Perhaps because they were intended to celebrate Clara’s birthday in December, they are even more intimate than those earlier pieces - which, although they were published with alternative versions for clarinet and violin, makes them particularly appropriate to the confiding voice of the oboe.

The opening Nicht schnell (not fast) in A minor is a particularly spontaneous expression with a poetic subtlety in its continuity. It is not at all clear until near the end which is the main theme, the flowing quavers of the oboe’s first entry or the broader melody introduced by the same instrument a few bars later. The scherzando material in the middle is so briefly exposed and so discreetly approached that it could be part of the development, although it actually turns out to be the central section of an elusively asymmetrical ternary construction with the quaver theme playing a definitively prominent part towards the end.

The Einfach, innig (simple, inward) is a contrastingly straightforward ternary movement, its charmingly melodious outer sections in A minor effectively offset by a more agitated middle section in F sharp minor. The Nicht schnell third movement is no less well defined in construction but slightly more complex - because of the contradictory nature of the outer sections, where A minor melancholy alternates with C major vivacity, the exquisitely ambiguous harmonies of the middle section, and the briefly retrospective coda that finally settles the tonality in A major.

Nicht schnell

Einfach, innig

Nicht schnell

In the first half of 1849 the city of Dresden, where Robert and Clara Schumann had taken a flat in the Waisenhausstrasse four or five years earlier, was in a state of violent political unrest. Far from distracting the composer from his work, however, the situation positively encouraged him to get on with it. "I've been very busy for some time now," Schumann wrote to his colleague Ferdinand Hiller, "It's been my most fruitful year. It’s just as if outward storms drove one more into oneself." Unlike Richard Wagner, he avoided taking an active part in the revolution which definitively broke out in Dresden in May - preferring to take refuge outside the city for six weeks or so - and he did indeed produce a phenomenal amount of high-quality music at this time, little of it affected by events in the world outside.

The Three Romances, Op.94, are a late addition to the series of lyrical chamber works - the Fantasy Pieces, Op.73, the Adagio and Allegro, Op.70, the Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op.102 - written amid the turmoil of the first few months of the year. Perhaps because they were intended to celebrate Clara’s birthday in December, they are even more intimate than those earlier pieces. So, though scored originally for oboe (and published with alternative versions for clarinet and violin) they are by no means inappropriate to the confiding voice of the viola.

The opening Nicht schnell (not fast) in A minor is a particularly spontaneous expression with a poetic subtlety in its continuity. It is not at all clear until near the end which is the main theme, the flowing quavers of the (on this occasion) viola’s first entry or the broader melody introduced by the same instrument a few bars later. The scherzando material in the middle is so briefly exposed and so discreetly approached that it could be part of the development, although it actually turns out to be the central section of an elusively asymmetrical ternary construction with the quaver theme playing a definitively prominent part towards the end.

The Einfach, innig (simple, inward) is a contrastingly straightforward ternary movement, its charmingly melodious outer sections in A minor effectively offset by a more agitated middle section in F sharp minor. The Nicht schnell third movement is no less well defined in construction but slightly more complex - because of the contradictory nature of the outer sections, where A minor melancholy alternates with C major vivacity, the exquisitely ambiguous harmonies of the middle section, and the briefly retrospective coda that finally settles the tonality in A major.