Italian pianist Tullia Melandri records Robert Schumann's Op.4 Intermezzi and Sonata No.1 Op.11 on fortepiano

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.