Ruth Slenczynskaâ¢SCHUMANN Ruth Slenczynska ... - Ivory Classics

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made no secret of his affections, and published them in the dedications of his music, in thinly disguised musical acrostics, and in his letters. He examined and recorded the fluctuating states of his passion with cool detachment despite the depth of emotion. It seems that he lived in the third person singular, so analytical are his epistolary descriptions of his own feelings. He confided his loves to his mother, to whom he was deeply devoted. He often wrote to one of his feminine friends confessing admiration for another. And once he wrote to a perfect stranger, declaring in a curt sentence: “Clara Wieck loves, and is loved.” At that time he was going through the torturing battle of sentiment with Clara’s father who opposed Schumann’s marriage to Clara to the bitter end. Two other women besides Clara occupied Schumann’s mind during this early period of his life. One was Ernestine von Fricken, his first romantic love, the other, Henriette Voigt who played the role of a confidante. Ernestine was Estrella, the starlet of Schumann’s imaginary anti-Philistine Society of David. She was immortalized in the “dancing letters” of Carnaval, which spell the name of her native town. She was a pupilboarder at the house of Clara’s father, who never suspected that she and Schumann kept clandestine rendezvous at the house of Henriette Voigt, the confidante. The attitude of Captain von Fricken towards Ernestine was peculiar. He wrote her: “Play duets with Schumann, but be careful not to do anything that might disturb your peace of mind or harm your good name.” But when Schumann went to Asch, ready to sanction his relations by marriage, he found out to his dismay that Ernestine was an illegitimate child adopted by the Captain, and not an heir to his fortune. But the romance was already on the wane. Clara, although only sixteen, now occupied Schumann’s full attention. To make sure of the indivisibility of that attention, Clara wrote to Ernestine asking her whether she had any claims on Schumann, and received an admirably unselfish reply that she had none. Much later, analyzing his mental state in retrospect, Schumann wrote to Clara: “I feel strongly that Ernestine has been wronged. She was the victim of circumstances, and I know well that I was at fault.” But he found an explanation that mitigated his consciousness of guilt: Ernestine drove Clara from Schumann’s heart without being aware of it, and thus the priority of love was merely re-established when Schumann returned to Clara. Ernestine herself, strangely self-denying creature that she must have been, wrote to Schumann and told him she had always believed that he could love no one but Clara. Ernestine married an old aristocrat even before Schumann’s marriage to Clara; her husband soon died, and she followed him, a victim of a typhoid epidemic. Robert Schumann dedicated the Piano Sonata No.2 in G Minor, Opus 22 to Henriette – 8 –
Voigt, the accommodating confidante. Writing to Henriette in 1834, Schumann said she was “an A-flat major soul,” but her soul must have changed key, for the Sonata is in G Minor! Schumann was slow in composing this Sonata, and it took him nearly five years to bring it to completion. The Sonata is in the orthodox four movements, but each movement individually is far from orthodox. The first movement is feverishly impetuous. The tempo is marked “as fast as possible,” but towards the end of the movement there are further impellents, piu mosso, and ancora piu animato. The second movement is an uncommonly short, Andantino in 6/8, nominally in the key of C Major, but too fluctuating to convey a definite impression of tonality. Then follows a nervous, syncopated Scherzo, in the tonic key of G Minor. The last movement is a Rondo. The technical style is characteristic of the post-Beethoven period of piano literature. The accompanying figures contain wide intervals, awkward to play; there are elements or polyphony that suggest the mental image of an orchestra. Yet the Sonata is very pianistic, in the transcendental sense and pre-eminent among the works of the period as a highly successful composition expressing the new free and romantic spirit in a form inalienably identified with classical abstraction. – Notes by Marina and Victor Ledin, Copyright © 1990 and 2000 – 9 –
Page 1 and 2: Ruth Slenczynska•SCHUMANN CARNAVA
Page 3 and 4: Ruth Slenczynska, Pianist Original
Page 5 and 6: dual parts of Schumann’s personal
Page 7: of descriptive piano pieces bearing
Page 11 and 12: the wings of New York’s Town Hall
Page 13 and 14: Ivory Classics recording team after
Page 15 and 16: CREDITS l l l l l l l l Recorded at

Ruth Slenczynskaâ¢SCHUMANN Ruth Slenczynska ... - Ivory Classics

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Ruth Slenczynskaâ¢SCHUMANN Ruth Slenczynska ... - Ivory Classics