00:00 – Durchaus phantastisch und liedenschaftlich vorzutragen
12:21 – Massig. Durchaus energisch
19:10 – Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten
An almost cathartically intense performance of Schumann’s most important large-scale piano work, and one of the most important in the entire period.
The Op.17 Fantasy is remarkable for many reasons – the bedazzling variety of its textures, its addictive quirkiness (Schumann probably had the most acute sense of the fantastic among all the Romantic composers), its expressive power (especially in the uplifting final movement). But one feature not often noticed is the structural complexity of the first movement, which represents Schumann’s most successful engagement with sonata form.
The biggest mystery of the first movement is the notorious Im Legendenton [04:43], which though beautiful seems to constitute a massive disruption of the development section [which begins at 03:09], apparently unconnected as it is to the rest of the movement. In fact, the Im Legendenton is a direct outgrowth the inner-voice theme at [0:59], and a nice example of Schumann’s skill at conjuring new material out of apparently nothing. Nonetheless, the Im Legendenton is not at all a conventional episode in a development section: the development is meant to be unstable, and to be open-ended – it prepares for the arrival of the tonic and the recapitulation. But the Im Legendenton’s structure is too well-formed, its tonality too stable, and its posture too inward-looking to count as a development per se.
There are other structural tricks going on here too: the recapitulation [which begins at 08:03 in the wrong key of C minor] directly invokes the beginning of the development(!) section [at 10:08] to firmly re-establish the tonality of C major, an unusual step that Schumann also takes in his other sonatas. It’s an ingenious and natural gesture, despite its apparent oddness: given how prominent the development is in the movement, it seems fitting that the recapitulation expands to encompass material from the development section. There’s also the fact that the opening theme begins a pedal point on G that is never properly resolved until the perfectly cadence coming nearly 300 bars later – a nice instance of long-term harmonic tension and resolution. (This is a feature of the Op.17 as a whole – a progression with a clear harmonic goal is introduced, only for that goal to be sidestepped and delayed to a much further point.)
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the structural complexity of the first movement is mirrored in the last. Take its opening: we’ve got this tranquil four-bar curtain, and then 6 bars introducing the main melody. And as soon as this melody ends we get some pretty aggressive developmental treatment of the first two bars of the melody [starting at 20:02] which seems out-of-place coming so early in the movement. And then – what appears to have been such a promising theme simply vanishes. It will be some time, in fact before the main thematic material is directly presented.
There’s a lot more at work here: the sly references between each movement, for e.g., or the ingenuity of the first movement’s development section. But it’s basically impossible to get it all down here, so just listening will have to do – though that’s not too bad, surely.