Schumann believed that 'Everything in the world affects me… I think it over in my own way, and then it has to find a way out through music.'
Performer Biography
Roderick Williams, a baritone on this recording, is also a composer whose works have been premiered at venues like Wigmore and Barbican Halls, and he won a British Composer Award in 2016.
Composition History
Robert Schumann's 'year of song' in 1840, when these three song cycles were composed, followed a decade of despair and a court battle to marry Clara Wieck, his piano teacher's daughter.
Compositional Technique
The Liederkreis (a 'circle of songs') by Robert Schumann arranges twelve poems by Joseph von Eichendorff to create an emotional arc of a coming-of-age narrative.
Compositional Technique
Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben (A woman's life, a woman's love) is notable for being written entirely from a female character's viewpoint, charting her life from crush to widowhood.
Composer Biography
Robert Schumann struggled with fragile mental health from an early age, reconciling two contradictory sides of his personality he named Florestan ('the wild') and Eusebius ('the mild').
Recording & Production
This album is part of a 'Lieder in English' project founded by pianist Christopher Glynn to make classical song more accessible, featuring new English translations of song cycles.
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