Paolo Giacometti - R. Schumann: Humoreske In B Flat Major / Toccata In C Major / Phantasiestücke (2001)

(…) Robert Schumann (1810-1856) is unquestionably one of the greatest exponents of 19th-century Romantic piano music. Some of the most important reasons for this judgment lie not only in the breadth and importance of his oeuvre, but also in the unusually personal character of his music, which displays a capricious nature, full of peaks and valleys, emotionally unsparing, ranging from wildest exaltation to deepest depression. So it is with the Humoreske op. 20, whose title, not to be confused with humor in the current nglish sense of the word, refers to the older meaning of humor as emotional state. It is a masterpiece, intended as a supreme example of self-expression, no longer confined to a fixed form, and liberated from any kind of framework. The result is an inexhaustible sequence of emotional fragments. Only now and then does a motive return, in remembrance, as it were, a signpost which is quickly abandoned as suddenly as it appeared when a new path opens into the world of Schumann’s emotions. (…)