Robert Schumann

An early work that sets to music the masked ball in a novel by Jean Paul, it is something like a preview of the dual self that would later split into Florestan and Eusebius.

• In the final piece, a clock strikes six and the music fades away as if candles were going out one by one — a passage known to depict the end of the masked ball and the coming of dawn.
• The moment when the tune of the old German folk dance 'Grandfather's Dance' (Grossvatertanz) slips in — a clash of old and new that returns later in 'Carnaval'.
• Twelve short scenes follow one another like the pages of a picture book flipped in quick succession — listen for the points where the mood shifts abruptly the moment one piece ends.
• The opening theme, which begins in the manner of a slow waltz, returns transformed at the end, framing the whole work like the door that opens and closes the ball.

A masked-ball suite that sets portraits of himself, his friends, Chopin and Paganini side by side over a cipher hiding the musical letters in the name of his fiancée Ernestine's hometown and in the composer's own name.

• The short piece titled 'Chopin' is a portrait imitating Chopin's signature singing left-hand accompaniment and ornaments — worth comparing to hear how precisely Schumann captured Chopin's idiom.
• 'Paganini' runs through passages in which the fingers cross rapidly and spring off the keys (staccato), sounding as if the violin's dazzling virtuosity had been carried over to the piano.
• The two pieces 'Florestan' and 'Eusebius' are self-portraits of the passionate self and the dreaming self respectively; heard side by side, the contrast is striking.
• A short figure made of the four notes A, E-flat (Es), C and B (H) recurs throughout many of the pieces — a cipher drawn from the name of his fiancée's hometown and the spelling of Schumann's own name.
• The finale, 'March of the League of David against the Philistines', is an imagined march in which a league of progressive artists routs the conservative philistines, a grand conclusion in which the piano drives forward with weighty chords and marching rhythms.

Written while he was separated from Clara in the years before their marriage, the work looks back on childhood. These are not pieces for a child to play but pieces written by an adult looking back on youth.

• The seventh piece, 'Träumerei' (Dreaming), is the most famous of the set; its simple, singing melody is often played as an encore.
• Throughout, it is steeped not in bright nursery-song cheer but in a wistful, longing mood — it is best heard through the eyes of an adult yearning for childhood.
• The final piece, 'The Poet Speaks', ends quietly, leaving a lingering resonance like a question left unanswered.

Written in the 'year of song' that finally brought his marriage, this cycle on poems by Heine holds both the joy that crowns a long wait and the bitterness hidden beneath it.

• The first song, 'Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,' opens on harmonies that never quite settle but waver unresolved — painting at once the thrill and the unease of a new love not yet sure of itself.
• The postludes in which the piano carries on alone after the voice has fallen silent, above all the long piano postlude of the final song, sound as though they were finishing the feelings the singer could not bring to an end.
• The moments where Heine's peculiar bittersweet irony overlaps with gentle melody — listen for the difference in temperature between words and music, and the songs reach far deeper.

Said to have been sketched in just four days in the year after his marriage, this symphony lets newfound happiness and hope overflow through the entire orchestra.

• The rising signal (fanfare) the brass cry out at the very opening — a passage said to have been inspired by a line from a poem in praise of spring.
• Throughout the first movement the rhythm quickens and gathers vigor — worth hearing for its sense of momentum, as if moving from winter into spring.
• Warmly received at its premiere under his friend Mendelssohn, the symphony is marked by the bright, confident tone the whole orchestra sustains.

Begun as a single-movement fantasy for Clara, it was completed a few years later as a full concerto, and Clara herself gave the premiere.

• The opening, where the piano plunges headlong the instant the orchestra strikes a short chord — counted among the most famous beginnings in the history of the concerto.
• The slow second movement is full of passages where piano and orchestra seem to trade remarks, which is why it is often called 'the conversing movement.'
• As the music passes into the third movement, a rhythm with subtly displaced beats (syncopation) appears — a passage that sounds jaunty yet slightly off balance.

Written soon after he took up his post in Düsseldorf and settled in the Rhine valley, this symphony absorbs the flow of the river and the impressions left by Cologne Cathedral.

• The fourth movement is said to capture his impressions of a solemn ceremony in Cologne Cathedral — listen for the majestic, chant-like brass chords that unfold like a procession.
• Many have heard in the broadly unfolding string themes of the first and fifth movements the unhurried flow of the Rhine.
• The orchestration throughout is dense and sonorous, bearing traces of the large choral and orchestral stages he handled as a conductor in his Düsseldorf years.