Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections --

i. Einfach (Simple)
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
-- Noch rascher (Still quicker)
-- Erstes Tempo (First tempo)
-- Wie im Anfang (As at the beginning)
iii. Hastig (Hurried)
-- Nach und nach immer lebhafter and stärker (Bit by bit ever livelier and stronger)
-- Wie vorher (As before)

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 4:19, 5:07; iii. 5:57, 7:51, 9:09]
Radu Lupu, piano. Live performance in Amsterdam, May 29, 1983

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:59, 2:53, 3:55, 5:11; iii. 5:55, 7:38, 8:44]
Vladimir Horowitz, piano. Live performance in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., Apr. 22, 1979

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:31, 2:25, 3:55, 4:43; iii. 5:18, 7:24, 8:50]
Alicia de Larrocha, piano. RCA, recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, Nov. 8-9 & 11, 1994

[i. 0:01; ii. 1:15, 2:03, 3:15, 4:00; iii. 4:28, 6:09, 7:30]
Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

A TIP: If you continue reading, a feeling may gradually overtake you that we're never going to come back to these musical examples. Surprisingly, this is not true! At the end, there's a section suggesting kinds of things to consider in listening just to the 38-bar "Einfach" section reproduced in its entirety up top.

by Ken

Some of you may have noticed that the rendering by the fine English pianist Imogen Cooper of what I'm calling "opening sections" of Schumann's Humoreske which we heard earlier today in "post under construction" form ("Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a 'Humoreske'?") was a Sunday Classics "encore presentation," dating back to last summer, when the news of Imogen C (born August 1949) becoming Dame Imogen occasioned a series of posts -- specifically, in the July 25 "post tease" "A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party."


UM, WHY (AGAIN) ARE WE LISTENING TO THE HUMORESKE?

[post under construction]Before we hear Schumann's Humoreske, might we wonder: What the heck is a "Humoreske"?

The "Einfach" ("Simple") opening of Schumann's Humoreske

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening sections

i. Einfach (Simple) [at 0:01]
ii. Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light) [at 1:15]
iii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]

Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

Humoreske [humoresque]. Term used by Schumann as the title for an extended piece (op. 20) and by later composers for pieces of a relaxed and genial kind.

-- Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, 1st ed.

humoresque  n.   Music.   A whimsical or light-spirited composition.   [German Humoreske, from Humor, Humor, from English HUMOR]

-- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed.

by Ken

Readers who've been around for a while may recall that I don't turn to The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia for elucidation of musical forms with great hope, and once again I think my trusty old American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.) does better.

Basically, what Norton/Grove has to offer is this: So Schumann wrote this Op. 20 Humoreske, by which he meant, well, whatever the heck he meant, and some later composers composed Humoresken and they seemed to think the term referred to a piece "of a relaxed and genial kind." Note that N/G doesn't exactly commit Schumann to this understanding of the term, which is just as well, because even in Imogen Cooper's performance, which is unusual in honestly honoring Schumann's "Simple" and "Very quick and light" markings for the previous sections (you get the sense that she knows quite well that in the course of the piece's 25-30-minute duration it will encompass all sorts of music that isn't remotely "simple" or "light"), by the time we reach the "Hurried" marking at 4:28 we're in musical terrain that surely isn't fairly described as "relaxed," and almost surely not as "genial" either.

AHD too wants us thinking in "light-spirited" directions, but kudos to the AHD definer for giving us "whimsical," almost always a good descriptor for the musical imaginings of Schumann, who tapped so freely and abundantly into one of music history's most fantastic and diverse imaginations, so often allowing his inspirations not only to contrast but to transform and overlap in the most, well, imaginative ways.


NOW POSTED: "Radu Lupu (1945-2022) [3]: We are going to hear more Lupu, but I'm afraid we're sticking awhile longer with the 'opening sections' of Schumann's Humoreske"

#

Post tease: A special artist finds her way into our Brahms piano party

Imogen Cooper (as of June "Dame Imogen")  [photo by Benjamin Ealovega]

SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20: opening movements --
i. Einfach (Simple) -- Sehr rasch und leicht (Very quick and light)
ii. Hastig (Hurried) [at 4:28]


Imogen Cooper, piano. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, May 28, 1994

by Ken

It's funny how things come together. As I'm going to explain in the main post, when I started thinking about Imogen Cooper, it had nothing to do, at least nothing directly to do, with our present exploration of Brahms's path to and through the intermezzo genre (most recent installment: Wednesday's "'It's a gift' (cont.): A bit more about operatic intermezzos, and a lot more about 19th-century-style instrumental ones"). And then, somehow, it did. With a minimum of intention on my part, it practically crashed into our Brahms piano party.

When we get to something more like a proper post, you're going to be presented with something I happen to have written a few days ago recalling the experience of picking up almost much at random a CD I've had for goodness-knows-how-long, "of several sets of short piano pieces by Schumann and Brahms played by Imogen Cooper -- a British pianist I've always enjoyed, having first encountered her on records as a song accompanist, and such a good one that she grabbed my attention." After which --

I fired the disc up, starting with Schumann's Humoreske, a suite of humoresques, and from the first note there it was: the direct outreach of a human spirit reaching out to whoever might be at the other end of the electronic pathway. It was the very thing, I realized, that had attracted me in everything I'd heard her play."

And those opening numbers of Schumann's Op. 20 we've just heard are the very thing I heard.


SO HOW DID THIS COME TO CONCERN US TODAY?