This disc brings together four Romantic masterpieces by Robert Schumann, composed between 1830 and 1839, performed with imagination and commitment.

9 MP3 Songs in this album (77:14) !
Related styles: Classical: Romantic Era, Classical: Piano solo, Solo Instrumental

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Details:
This recording is the product of a life-long addiction to the music of Robert Schumann. In my first encounters with selections from the Album for the Young, and the Scenes from Childhood, the vividness, playfulness and richness of his Romantic imagination caught hold of me, and helped form my own intuitive approach to music. With age, I understand more of his lyrical melodic gift, his often free-wheeling approach to form, his harmonic daring, and the intellectual, often contrapuntal rigor that lies beneath the seemingly improvisatory surface of his art. His life dealt with the tensions of being a creative artist in a bourgeois society, the relationships between music and literature, and between imagination, creativity and madness; central to it all is the intensely personal, passionate longing (a feeble English equivalent for the German sehnsucht) that characterized his courtship and marriage to Clara Wieck, and infused virtually every note he wrote. One compact disc is insufficient for and adequate exploration of Schumannâs art. I offer a mere sampling of the remarkable musical outpouring of his twenties, and just a taste of his multi-faceted treatment of form, which encompasses traditional structures like the variation and sonata, and the more unconventional and original poetic cycle, of which he was both pioneer and unsurpassed master.

DANIEL PAUL HORN has given recitals throughout North America, and has appeared with various Midwestern orchestras. An avid chamber musician, he regularly collaborates with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; with the MasterWorks Ensemble, he has performed in Bermuda and at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Other partners include the Ying String Quartet, cellist Stephen Balderston, and pianist Alexander Djordjevic. He concertizes with noted singers, including Michelle Areyzaga, Carolyn Hart, Denise Gamez, Gerard Sundberg, Stephen Morscheck and Kenneth Cox. He has premiered compositions of Jacob Bancks, David M. Gordon, Patrick Kavanaugh, Daniel Kellogg, and Max Raimi.

As an early keyboardist, he played harpsichord continuo in under the baton of John Nelson, and in 1997, recorded the critically praised âWanderingsâ for Titanic Records on an 1829 Graf in the Frederick Collection. In about the disc in American Record Guide, John Bell Young wrote, "Mr. Horn is a colorist at heart and not in the least ashamed of exploiting it, though as such he is neither egoistically willful." In Clavier Magazine, Philippa Kiraly praised his handling of the instrument as "thrilling," saying that "Wanderings" "is sheer pleasure to anyone interested in early pianos." Robert McDonald of the Juilliard School called it "an altogether terrific recording -- interesting as a musical statement from beginning to end," and Continuo Magazine said "it is sure to become a classic." Horn also recorded on the Centaur label with CSO cellist Donald Moline, and with soprano Carolyn Hart, has recorded an anthology of Canadian art-song.

Horn studied at Peabody with Walter Hautzig, and at Juilliard, where he studied with Martin Canin and Felix Galimir, and earned his doctorate. He has also coached with Jerome Lowenthal, Ann Schein, Joseph Bloch, and Menahem Pressler, for whom he twice served as a guest assistant at Indiana University. Currently Professor of Piano and Chair of Keyboard Studies at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, he has been a faculty artist at the Sewanee, Adamant, Blue Mountain, and MasterWorks summer festivals.