Orchestra of Exiles

There are times when, living in Vancouver, I feel that we, in spite of the natural beauty, are culturally the backwater of North America. The film Orchestra of Exiles, the story of the formation of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, has been making the rounds of theatres in the United States, but never came to Vancouver. I was therefore happy that this wonderful film had just been released on DVD. Watching the film, I was moved by this incredible story of compassion, bravery, vision, and perseverance, the effort of one man, who founded this now world class orchestra.

Bronislaw Huberman was a master violinist, beloved by audiences in major musical centres in Europe and the United States. In 1929, he visited and concertized for the first time in Palestine, and was moved by the frontier spirit of the people living there at the time. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930’s, and began firing Jewish musicians from major orchestras, Huberman took a public stand and refused an offer – artistically rewarding and financially lucrative, to be sure - from conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic, the premiere German orchestra then as it is now. Seeing the days that Jewish people could safely live in German were numbered, Huberman had a dream of forming a world class symphony orchestra in Palestine, to give a musical and physical home to the many accomplished musicians displaced by the Nazi regime

Putting his career on hold, and going against incredible political and financial odds, Huberman travelled throughout Europe and auditioned players for “his” orchestra. He foresaw that Hitler’s ambitions would not be restricted to Germany, and therefore did not limit his activities just within Germany. Because of all the travelling and pressure, there were times when he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not to mention financial ruin. For musicians who were not good enough to become a part of his orchestra, he knew that they would have to remain in Europe, where their lives would be very much in peril. He even tried to extend assistance not only to the musicians who had been chosen, but to their immediate and, sometimes, extended families, eventually saving about 1000 Jews from certain death.

Finally, in 1936, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra was formed, with its first series of concerts conducted by Arturo Toscanini, probably the most famous conductor of the time, and a firm anti-fascist who, like Huberman, had refused to perform in Germany and Austria. Huberman himself refused to appear as soloist with the orchestra, insisting that the stage being devoted entirely to showcasing his orchestra. Because of his efforts, the Israel Philharmonic - the name of the orchestra since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 - is now one of the world’s great orchestras.

Part documentary and part dramatisation, Orchestra of Exiles tells the story of the birth of this great orchestra. The orchestra has been referred to as an “orchestra of concertmasters”, since many orchestra members were concertmasters and section leaders in orchestras in Germany, Austria, and throughout Europe. Director Josh Aronson effectively combined re-enactments of Huberman’s life, episodes from Huberman’s search for musicians, and the orchestra’s initial rehearsals with Toscanini, with actual archival film footages from the orchestra’s history. There are interviews with past and present members of the orchestra, family members who were helped by Huberman, violinists Joshua Bell (who now owns and plays Huberman’s violin), Ivry Gitlis, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta, the Israel Philharmonic current Music Director.

I was completely engrossed, captivated, and moved by this inspiring story, of how one man faced incredible odds, sacrificed his own comfort and well-being, to create something lasting, something that now benefits the entire world. Hurberman insisted that musicians of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra also taught, with the result now that many musicians of the Israel Philharmonic are students - in many cases children and grandchildren - of the original musicians. And he saved an important part of the European musical tradition.

Orchestra of Exiles is not - in the words of a review I read - “just another Holocaust story”. It is not just another story about a famous musician. It is a story of the human spirit, of how one man can take a public stand against overwhelming odds, and against great evil. It is a story that should be known not just by violinists or musicians, but by anyone with an interest in history – not just history of the Jewish people, but of all humanity.

Symphonic Masterpieces

With the ready availability of music today, it is easy to forget what a joy and privilege it is to attend a live musical performance, with great musicians playing great music, when all the elements came together for an exhilarating and uplifting artistic experience.

It was indeed such an evening in Vancouver this past Saturday, with the return of conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama and pianist Ingrid Fliter, in a rich and varied programme of Berlioz’s Le corsaire overture, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Bartok’s Divertimento for Strings, and Richard Strauss’ great tone poem, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.

Le corsaire was one of Berlioz’s many “concert overtures”, in reality a precursor to the tone poems that Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss were to compose later. Less popular than the composer’s Le carnival romain and Béatrice et Bénédict (this one a “real” overture to an opera), but no less brilliant, the work amply demonstrates Berlioz’s mastery as an orchestrator. Akiyama handled the tricky opening with great aplomb, from the rapid exchange between the very exposed runs in the strings and rhythmically intricate woodwind figures, to the beautiful slow middle section, and to the energetic finale. As if to welcome back this beloved former music director, the orchestra responded with a performance filled with nuance and musicality.

Of Felix Mendelssohn’s two piano concerti, the first one is probably the more extroverted one. Of the last generation of pianists, it was probably most famously and often played by Rudolf Serkin, although many of the current generation of pianists have taken its youthful exuberance to heart. Ingrid Fliter is no stranger to Vancouver audiences, having appeared many times as a recitalist and once before (I think) with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In the outer movements, Ms. Fliter once again demonstrated her considerable ability at the keyboard, and played the solo part with all the brilliance and glitter, but also lightness, that it demands. She played the slow movement, the emotional core of the work, with a kind of hushed eloquence as well as an incredible musicality. Once again, I am reminded of why she remains, for me, one of the most interesting of the very crowded field of young artists playing today.

Without the efforts of conductor Paul Sacher, who originally commissioned Bartok’s Divertimento for Strings, the musical world would have been deprived of some of the greatest orchestral works written by 20^th century composers. Unlike Bartok’s seminal work, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (also a Sacher commission), his Divertimento for Strings, which opens the second half of the concert, sounds almost light-hearted and uplifting. The strings of the Vancouver Symphony did themselves proud in this very difficult work, from the constantly shifting rhythms in the first and third movement, to the dark colours and restless mood of the middle movement. There was some wonderful solo playing by the section leaders of the string section.

When Akiyama was music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel was a work that he conducted often. Like Berlioz, Strauss’ evocation of the misadventures and eventual demise of this legendary figure, really shows his understanding and mastery of the art of orchestration. Like a master storyteller, Akiyama expertly guided the orchestra through Strauss’ thematic transformation of both the introductory theme and Till’s leitmotif, represented by the French horn – the technical difficulty of this French horn motif reminds us that Strauss’s father was one of the premier orchestral horn players in Europe. Unlike some conductors, Akiyama does not “milk” the music for all its worth, exaggerating the wittiness or the elements of gemülichkeit in the score, but letting the music breathe and unfold naturally. The message obviously got through, since I could hear members of the audience chuckling at Till’s many antics during the performance. At the end of the performance, the smiles on the faces of the orchestral players almost matched the evident delight of the audience.

Among the many congratulatory telegrams and messages read at the end of Maestro Akiyama’s farewell concert as music director of the Vancouver Symphony, the one I remember was written by pianist Claudio Arrau, who called Akiyama “one of the elect”, no small compliment coming from an artist who had played with some of the great conductors of the 20^th century.

Throughout the evening, I found myself being mesmerized by Mr. Akiyama’s expressive hands, with his every gesture guiding the musicians along, and shaping the musical phrases with great subtlety and souplesse. I imagine that no orchestral musician will have trouble understanding the intention and message of his baton.

I agree with Nietzsche’s dictum that “Without music, life would be a mistake.” Indeed, we must always be reminded that great music is a privilege, especially in our age when music can be had with the push of a button. I am grateful that Mr. Akiyama has maintained his association with Vancouver, and I hope that both he and Ms. Fliter will continue to grace our stages with their presence and talents. With musicians like them, we can be sure that the art of music will always be in good hands.

Simon Trpčeski

After their presentation of the Doric String Quartet last Sunday, the Vancouver Recital Society brought to the stage of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts the young Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski.

I had first heard Mr. Trpčeski years ago, when he played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a hot and humid July evening, as I remember it, and the hall’s air conditioning broke down the day of the performance. But that did not prevent the pianist from giving a sizzling – pun quite intended – performance of the old warhorse. Since that time, Trpčeski has been going from strength to strength, playing with the most prestigious orchestras and in major music centres the world over.
Last night, in an unseasonably cold and wet evening in Vancouver, he opened his recital with Franz Schubert charming 16 German Dances, D. 783. The relative lack of major technical hurdles in these miniatures belies the depth behind the music, and the difficulty in bringing them across with conviction. As with the waltzes and mazurkas of Chopin, these Schubert dances are really dances for the soul. Trpčeski brought out the character and lilt in each dance in his utterly musical playing, mustering all the gemütlichkeit inherent in every note of this music.
In complete contrast, Trpčeski rounded out the first half of his programme with the same composer’s Fantasie in C Major, D. 760, more popularly known as the Wanderer Fantasy. If the German Dances represent the intimate face of Schubert’s music, the Wanderer Fantasy surely reveals the virtuosic, the Lisztian, even the demonic side. Technically probably the most difficult of Schubert’s solo pianistic output, the work calls for both strength and delicacy, both brains and brawn. Trpčeski possesses both qualities in abundance.

I was surprised that he almost underplayed the dramatic opening chords, but then I realized that he was pacing the work, and saving the “fireworks” for later on. The transition from the opening of the work to the sombre and dark slow Adagio was impeccably handled, as was the transition between the Presto and the final Allegro. I find his playing of the beginning of the final fugue particularly arresting. The opening chords of the great Adagio was played magnificently – he voiced the chords to give them the darkest possible tone colours - as was the rest of the movement, and again reminded me of Arthur Rubinstein’s statement, that Schubert was the only composer that could stare directly at death.The second half of Trpčeski’s recital was devoted to the music of Franz Liszt, beginning with the composer’s transcription of J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, originally written for the organ. Last season, we had the incredible recital by Andras Schiff where he played Book One of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, so it was particularly fascinating to hear Bach through the 19^th century eyes of Franz Liszt. This was thoroughly romantic Bach, exploiting, in the best sense of the word, all the resources of the piano. A master transcriber, Liszt was able to evoke the sound of the organ on the piano, and what a sound it was under the hands of Trpčeski!
Trpčeski followed with three of Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne, Valses-Caprices d’aprés Schubert, S. 427. Taking off from the various dances for piano that Schubert wrote, including three from the set of dances we heard at the beginning of the evening, Liszt wrote miniature tone poems for the piano using these dance themes. Trpčeski can create a beguiling sound on the piano, and this sound suited these pieces perfectly. At the end of the last piece of the set (No. 6 in A Minor, the same piece played by Vladimir Horowitz in his now legendary Moscow recital), the audience chuckled with delight before rewarding the pianist with warm applause. It is quite telling to realize that Schubert’s relative modest little dances for keyboard should serve as raw material for Liszt, as well as for Maurice Ravel in the 20^th century in his masterpiece, the Valses nobles et sentimentales.
The final piece on the programme – the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp Minor – is so famous that it has been played by pianists from Liberace and Victor Borge on one end to Horowitz on the other end of the pianistic spectrum, and almost everyone in between. Trpčeski certainly played the famous work with all the glitter and excitement it calls for, but never losing sight of bringing across the character inherent in each unique section. Never was beauty and depth of sound sacrificed for surface excitement, and never had the gypsy influence on this music been made clearer than in last night’s performance.

After thunderous applause and a well-deserved ovation, Trpčeski rewarded the audience with three encores – Schubert Moment Musical in F Minor, Chopin’s Prelude in D Minor, the last of his set of twenty-four, and Schubert’s beautiful Ständchen, as transcribed by Liszt. Once again, every one of these works was played as it should be. I was particularly moved by the quiet eloquence that Trpčeski afforded the Schubert / Liszt Ständchen. For me, that final piece captured the mood of the entire evening, and sent the audience home elevated by the beauty of the music played.
I have now heard Simon Trpčeski with orchestra and as a recitalist. Next season, he will once again grace the Vancouver stage with his presence, in a chamber music recital with cellist Daniel Müller-Schott. Doubtless this will give us another opportunity to enjoy another facet of the talents of this young artist.

On Hearing the Doric String Quartet

A performance by a string quartet is unusual fare for the Vancouver Recital Society, so when I was given tickets to a performance by Britain’s Doric String Quartet, I went with more than my unusual degree of anticipation for a musical performance. The quartet was only formed in 1998, and the musicians – violinists Alex Redington and Jonathan Stone, violist Simon Tandree, and cellist John Myerscough, who also acted as (eloquent) spokesman for the group – look like they are perhaps in their early thirties.

From the first notes of Haydn’s G minor quartet, Op. 20, No. 3, I felt that we were in for a very special afternoon. I can think of no higher compliment than to say that this group of young musicians produce a sound and play with a degree of maturity that reminded me of great quartets like the now disbanded Amadeus String Quartet.

In addition to the Haydn, the quartet essayed Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 34, the last of the composer’s three quartets, and Schubert String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, more famously known as Death and the Maiden.

Part of what makes a performance great is what goes on in between the notes. In the performance of the quartet yesterday, there was a magical quality in the silences, the spaces in between notes, and in between musical ideas. The musicians were helped by the wonderful acoustics of the Chan Centre of the Performing Arts, which gives the string sound a bloom, an “after-sound” that would have been missing in Vancouver’s other performing spaces.

I appreciated also the musicians’ choice of tempi in all three quartets, especially the tempo relationship between the movements of the three works performed. In the first and final movements of the Schubert, the quartet played it at a more than usually quick tempo, making the counterpoint extremely exciting. However, within the context of the work, these tempi, for lack of a better word, “worked”.

Of particular interest to me was the quartet’s performance of Korngold’s third quartet. An astonishing child prodigy, Korngold composed, in his early teens, works that were admired by Gustav Mahler. Forced into exile to Hollywood, the composer became the first of generations of film composers, a sort of John Williams of his day - but musically far more advanced and sophisticated. Written between 1944 to1945 and dedicated to conductor Bruno Walter, the quartet borrows significantly from the composer’s film music. Korngold’s last quartet alternates between passages of a post-Wagnerian chromaticism to lyrical and beautiful, and unapologetically diatonic melodies.

Korngold’s gorgeous violin concerto has a new found popularity in recent years. Perhaps the quartet’s magnificent performance of the composer’s quartets, both yesterday and in their recording, will lead to greater interest in his chamber music works.

Perhaps some members of the audience would have preferred the performance to have more of an “edge”. For me, the beauty, the quality of the sound made by these four musicians was what captured my attention yesterday afternoon. It would be interesting to hear this quartet playing the quartets of Shostakovich and Bartok, works that sometimes call for a bit of harshness in the sound.

Once again, we must be grateful to Leila Getz, artistic director of the Vancouver Recital Society, for bringing the Doric String Quartet to Vancouver for their Canadian debut. As for me, I would travel anywhere to hear this talented young ensemble again in a wide variety of repertoire, and in the very near future.

Thinking of Van Cliburn

It was with great sadness that I read of pianist Van Cliburn’s passing last week at age 78. Mr. Cliburn had been suffering from bone cancer, and succumbed to illness on Wednesday, February 27^th.

For classical music lovers, especially those growing up in the 1960’s, Van Cliburn was a golden name. So great was Cliburn’s fame that his name was even mentioned in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon.

At the height of the Cold War, American-born Cliburn won not only the gold medal at the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, but also the heart of the Russian people. One of the most memorable images of the pianist is a photograph taken in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Cliburn is at the piano, looking heavenward and soulful; the area of the stage around the piano strewed with flowers thrown by adoring fans, and right in front of the stage lip are young Russian girls swooning over his playing – it is the ultimate image of the Artist-as-Hero.

From 1958 to 1978, Cliburn had one of the most spectacular careers imaginable in classical music. In 1978, Cliburn decided to take a sabbatical from concert giving, and gave only occasional performances since returning to the spotlight in 1987. His name, however, lives on in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, from which the careers of many talented pianists have been launched.

Every artist has an image in the minds of the public. It is this image that the public knows and loves, not the person. Cliburn, more than many artists, has been the victim of many myths and half-truths. These oft-repeated statements have been so entrenched in people’s minds that most of us have trouble separating fact from fantasy. Even in the many tributes and obituaries written at the time of Cliburn’s death, critics took no time in once again re-hashing these very tired statements.

The myths and half-truths surrounding Cliburn can be summarized quite succinctly:

1.                  Cliburn’s career was fizzling in 1957 before he went to compete in Moscow

2.                  Cliburn was a hit with the Russian audience because he was the exotic American, and his looks appealed to the Russian public

3.                  The only pieces Cliburn played well were Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3

4.                  Cliburn was not able to sustain a long career

5.                  Cliburn did not live up to his early promise

How do we answer these “charges”?

Van Cliburn won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1955, after which he received a lot of recital and concerto engagements. In 1957, he was called up for military service, and he therefore told his managers not to book any dates for him in the subsequent year. However, he was rejected by the army for health reasons, and therefore had a relatively open year in 1958. The timing thus became perfect that he was able to compete in Moscow in 1958.

Cliburn won the hearts of the Russian people because of his artistry. Even with the very poor recording quality of the time, his playing at the Tchaikovsky competition, in front of some of the greatest pianists of the time who were judging the competition, was simply spectacular. Sviatoslav Richter, one of the great pianists of our time, called Cliburn a genius, adding that he did not usually associate such a word with performers. Alexander Goldenweiser, a contemporary of Rachmaninoff and the dean of Soviet pianists, said that he had not heard Rachmaninoff’s 3^rd concerto played better since the composer last performed. There were other American pianists competing in Moscow in 1958 – Daniel Pollack and Raymond Lowenthal, to name just two - but none of them created a stir the way Cliburn did.

In the years following his Moscow win, Cliburn played solo and concerto appearances, and built up a vast repertoire. Yes, he was probably asked to play Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff more often, but he also essayed large chunks of solo repertoire as well as the standard concerti in the repertory. Great conductors, including Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Zubin Mehta, and Bruno Walter, loved playing with him.

As mentioned before, Cliburn had already enjoyed quite a successful performing career since 1955. After winning the Moscow competition, from 1958 to 1978, Cliburn played well over a hundred concerts for a period of twenty years - not able to sustain a career? Let’s be serious here. Many young musicians would love to “not be able to sustain a career” the way Cliburn did. On top of fulfilling his concert engagements, Cliburn lent his name and talent generously to causes that were close to his heart, namely, organizations and events that promote the arts, such as the Interlochen Arts Academy, and his own Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

As to the question of whether Cliburn “fulfilled his early promise”, one would have to ask with what criteria we are judging him. Vladimir Horowitz, considered by many as the “greatest” (a silly word) pianist of the 20^th century, never played as many concerts as Cliburn, and took frequent sabbaticals from the stress of concert-giving. In the last years of his life, Horowitz’s repertoire dwindled to only a handful of solo works and two or three concerti. Yet no one complained that Horowitz did not expand his repertoire, or that he did not “fulfil his promise” as an artist. And no one criticized Horowitz for playing Rachmaninoff and not Bartok. Jascha Heifetz stopped giving concerts at the height of his career, yet no one ever questioned his decision or criticized him for not able to “sustain a long career.” Arthur Rubinstein was an exception, giving performance up to his late eighties, when he was already half-blind, and loving it.

Polonius’ words from Act I of Hamlet, “To thine own self be true,” should be a dictum that every artist live by. I have not always responded to the way Cliburn played certain repertoire, but whether or not we are sympathetic to his music making, we should respect the fact that throughout his life, Van Cliburn had conducted his life and career his way. We can and should be grateful to him for having brought joy and beauty to music lovers the world over for over two decades.

Perhaps history will judge him with greater compassion and fairness, and with less cynicism, than his contemporaries had.

Rest in Peace, Van Cliburn.

Musical Fiction

The lives of the great composer have always been used as raw materials for writers of fiction, be it novels, plays, or screenplays. Over the years, there have been fictionalized accounts of the lives of Chopin (A Song to Remember, Impromptu), Schumann (Song of Love), Liszt (Lisztomania, Song Without End), Grieg (Song of Norway), Mahler (Ken Russell’s Mahler, Bride of the Wind), and Tchaikovsky (The Music Lovers), just to name a few. In 1979, Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus was a great hit on London and Broadway stages, and was subsequently made into an even more popular film.

Creators of a very few of the films mentioned above did try to approximate the personality as well as facts about the composer’s life. Others, like Ken Russell, completely disregarded any semblance of truth in his insulting treatments of the lives of Mahler, Liszt and Tchaikovsky. When it comes to Hollywood and classical music, conductor and composer André Previn wrote, “When Walt Disney decided to film a life of Beethoven, he felt that deafness was too downbeat and not really germane to the story, so for once, and in glorious Technicolor, Beethoven retained perfect hearing to the end. Classical music has generally been a closed book to the movie executive mind…”

Even serious writers of fiction have taken over the lives of the composers in their creative efforts. Other than Shaffer’s Amadeus, writers as great as Alexander Pushkin fictionalized the death of Mozart in his 1830 verse drama Mozart and Salieri, subsequently made into a one-act opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In Rose Tremain’s beautifully written novel Music and Silence, composer and lutenist John Dowland made a “cameo” appearance.
In 2011, writer Sarah Quigley wrote The Conductor, a fictionalized account of conductor Karl Eliasberg’s heroic efforts in organizing a performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony during the siege of Leningrad. The only fact that one can establish about the story is that Eliasberg was indeed a conductor, not a great one, but who did indeed conducted Shostakovich’s wartime symphony, which very much raised the morale of citizens of Leningrad during the siege.

Without taking away any credits or merits from Quigley’s novel, her book does remind me of Soviet journalist and writer Vasily Grossman’s 1959 magnum opus Life and Fate, an epic story of the lives of Soviet citizens during the German invasion in World War II, focusing especially on the battle of Stalingrad. I did find Quigley’s The Conductor well written, and I was especially moved by her poignant description of the sights and sounds of everyday life - the challenges to find food, any food, the heartbreak of people dying, and the cruelty and kindness people show one another in times of trial - of people in Leningrad during the siege:

There had been a scuffle outside the bakery: a woman pushed against the wall by a teenager, the bread snatched from her hand. When Nikolai himself emerged from the bakery, the woman was still sitting empty-handed on the muddy curb. No one had helped her; the rest of the queue had said nothing, done nothing, simply stared as if they had no connection to thief or victim. The crime, the indifference – neither was out of the ordinary. By now everyone had learnt that survival meant looking after yourself.

At best, fictional works based on the events surrounding the lives of the great composers can do much to make aware and popularize great music. There is of course the danger that writers and filmmakers would distort the personality of these great musical figures and reduce their lives to the level of a soap opera. As much as Amadeus raised awareness of the music in the minds of non-music lovers, I am certain that many would remember Mozart as a buffoon who just happened to have been a genius, a charge that can easily be disproven by reading the composer’s many letters.

Every piece of musical fiction, like any creative work, must really be judged on its own merit. Sarah Quigley’s The Conductor is, for me, a serious and moving work of fiction that is worthy of our attention, and a stirring tale of human tragedy and heroism.

Life and Work of a Romantic Composer

With so much of the serious biographical material on Robert Schumann available only in German, a noteworthy book on the composer in English is always most welcomed. In 1985, psychiatrist and musician Peter Ostwald wrote Schumann – The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius, excellent psychobiography of the composer. Dr. Ostwald applied the same clinical analytical methods to his book Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius, an effort which I thought was less successful.

Hot off the press is German musicologist Martin Geck’s Robert Schumann – The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer, translated by Stewart Spencer (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Professor Geck set out, I think, to write not so much a purely chronological account of Schumann’s life, but more a discussion of the life and art of the composer within the context of the artistic and political milieu of his time. For me, what is even more intriguing is the fact that interspersed between chapters of his book are nine Intermezzi, essays that deal with various aspects of Schumann’s art.

With any biography of a well known figure, musical or otherwise, the acid test lies in whether one can learn something new about that historical figure. Other than facts of Schumann’s life, which are well known to music lovers, I do find the author’s discussions on the composers work and art most insightful.

Although friendly with his famous contemporaries Liszt and Wagner, he was not really close to them as friends or as artists. However, Schumann shared with Liszt and Wagner the belief in the idea of “the total artwork”, and searched for ways “of ensuring that the grand idea of a universal art might acquire a physical, tangible form.” Although it is well known that Schumann was regarded as a composer as well as a music critic, the author reminded me that Schumann viewed his music criticism and his writings on music not as reviews “in the traditional sense but as a form of poetic discourse”, not as criticism but as discussions of art and music.

One also finds within the chapters and in the Intermezzi quite detailed analysis of specific works of Schumann. I find the author’s discussion on the composer’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, particularly interesting, even exciting. Geck points out that in Schumann’s pianistic masterpiece, the composer was writing

with Kreisler looking over his shoulder, and it is Kreisler who gives him the courage to indulge a fantastical imagination unsupported by any program and to create a cycle that explores what Franz von Schober had called “life’s untamed circle” with a tremendous wealth of ideas but without the sort of safety harness that Bach and Beethoven had at their disposal in the form of an initial theme on which their respective sets of variations are based. It is now Kreisler / Schumann who provides the theme.

Geck also highlights for me two major works of Schumann’s that have been all but ignored by contemporary musicians – his opera Genoveva and the oratorio Paradise and the Peri, as well as some of the composer’s choral works. He goes on to discuss and analyse Schumann’s universally popular Träumerei and argues that the work refutes Hans Pfitzner’s dictum that “Great works of art spring from the unconscious, not from the conscious.” In Träumerei, Schumann “was deliberately flying in the face of the ideal of natural beauty” by having an extremely carefully calculated and constructed work sounding like it was the composer’s “feeling” that “painted” the scene, or the dream.

The composer’s marriage to pianist Clara Wieck, the subject of much misinformation since Schumann’s death, is also handled well by Geck. It is neither the haliographic account of an “ideal marriage between two artists” nor the feminist viewpoint of Clara’s genius becoming completely suppressed by the forces of social convention. The author discusses the role Clara played in the marriage, as well as the challenges faced by women composers in the 19^th century.

Martin Geck’s book on Schumann is not an easy read, but is an intelligent, insightful, and ultimately interesting addition to the literature on the great 19^th composer. The author did not set out to write a biographical study as exhaustive as Ernest Newman’s biography on Wagner, or Henry Louis de la Grange’s massive study on Mahler, but he does provide interested readers much new insight on Schumann’s life and the art, as well as the times in which he lived.