Thursday, May 20, 2010

Robert Schumann's Installment Plan Concerto

This weekend, you can hear the Schumann Piano Concerto on the program with Daria Rabotkina and the Harrisburg Symphony conducted by Stuart Malina at the Forum, Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.

I thought it would be interesting to look at all the different things that were going on in Schumann's life - actually, his and Clara's lives - during the years between his writing what became the concerto's first movement and then finally adding the last two movements four years later.

Considering I'm the kind of composer who spends a year working on a string quartet and two years on a symphony, it boggles the mind to see Schumann sketching a symphony IN A FEW DAYS and then taking maybe a month to orchestrate it or writing three string quartets in the span of seven weeks...

It's been very pleasant coming back to this piece after not having heard it for two years. There's something about not hearing a piece every month or so, then coming back to it after a long break where you can hear it afresh.

Anyway, you can read my "up-close & personal" post at the Harrisburg Symphony Blog here.


- Dick Strawser

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