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| Photo: © renska I media-weavers |
Italian pianist Tullia Melandri has recorded Robert
Schumann’s Intermezzi Op.4 and Piano Sonata in F sharp minor Op.11 on a Joseph
Simon fortepiano (Vienna, c.1830), an instrument built at the time Schumann
was composing the works on this recording. This particular instrument was restored at
the Laboratorio di Restauro del Fortepiano in Florence.
Schumann referred to the Opus 4 Intermezzi, composed from April to July
1832 and published in 1833 as “longer Papillons”, but the Intermezzi are
different to the Op.2 “Papillons” in that they include almost no literary
allusions. Only in Intermezzo No.2 is there any extra-musical reference,
with the marking above the slower middle section reading as “Meine Ruh’ ist his…” (My
peace of mind has vanished, spoken by Gretchen in Goethe’s “Faust”, Part
1.) In his diary the 22-year-old
composer wrote: “The Intermezzi are going to be something special – each note
is going to be weighed up carefully”. Probing his musical world in depth
and the influences feeding into it is not within the capability of every
pianist. French literary theorist, philosopher and critic Roland Barthes
referred to Schumann as “the musician of solitary images … an amorous and
imprisoned soul that speaks to himself”; in 1846, German music critic Eduard
Hanslick dismissed Schumann’s music as too “interior and strange” to have a future.
Tullia Melandri’s performance of the Op.4 Intermezzi is quick to involve the
listener, as she conjures up the pieces with her generous, unfettered,
quick-change artistry - their sense of spontaneity, of urgency, of whimsy, their
forays into magical worlds, their lyricism and tenderness, here and there, tinged
with just a hint of melancholy. Her technical savoir faire gives expression to
Schumann’s profuse pianistic textures and his preoccupation with counterpoint
at the time. (The composer claimed that he had learned more about counterpoint
by reading Jean Paul than he did by taking counterpoint classes.) Melandri
wields the Simon fortepiano with mastery and pizzazz, its untamed timbre
lending immediacy to the work’s unprompted gestures and clarity to its densest
textures.
Piano Sonata No.1 in f-sharp minor, Op. 11 showcases the complex
inter-relationship between Schumann's music and his life; his compositional
style is wrought of many influences - the writings of Romantic authors
Jean Paul Richter and E. T. A. Hoffmann and the music of Beethoven, Schubert,
and J.S.Bach. No less relevant to the background of the work is, however, that
it was begun when the 23-year-old Schumann was engaged to marry Ernestine von
Fricken and finished when he became enamoured with the 15-year-old virtuoso
pianist Clara Wieck, who would become his wife in 1840. Completed in August
1835 and published anonymously, the sonata was dedicated to Clara under the
names Florestan and Eusebius, contrasting characters (from Jean Paul’s novel
“Flegeljahre” -The Awkward Age), representing the eternal
Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy and, most pertinently, the two contrasting sides of
Schumann’s own personality - the turbulent and the reflective. As to his
approach to the sonata construction, Schumann reshapes it to serve his personal
narrative, interpolating previous works into its weave. Melandri sets the
work’s immense soundscape before the listener. Its moments of forceful
turbulence and insistence never emerge as unchecked or coarse. Her treatment of
the second movement - Aria - (based on “To Anna”, a song he composed in 1828)
is wistful and luminous, its melodic strands beautifully delineated. As to the
enigmatic Scherzo with its polonaise-like Intermezzo and puzzling recitative,
Melandri navigates its multipartite agenda with some elasticity, then to entice
the listener into the fantasy and new sound world of each episode of the Finale,
to conclude with consummate bravura.
It is the piano pieces created by Schumann in the 1830s that are
exceptionally emotional and intense. Tullia Melandri examines their multiplicity,
engaging the Joseph Simon fortepiano’s darker, slightly gritty but crystalline
timbre and reliable mechanical reaction to give both actuality and emotional
depth to these works. Recorded for the Dynamic label, the disc’s sound
quality is buoyant and vigorous. This CD is a must for those of us interested
in how historic keyboards and the works originally played on them
converge.
Born in Faenza, Italy, in 1976, Tullia Melandri’s piano studies took place
in Rovigo, Siena, Imola and Livorno. In 2002, she graduated from the University
of Bologna in Culture and Heritage Conservation, with a major in music,
presenting a thesis on music philology. Her interest in historically informed
performance has taken her to the Netherlands, where she studied fortepiano with Bart
van Oort. An award winner of several piano and chamber music competitions,
Melandri performs widely.
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