He began formal piano lessons aged 10 and was largely self- taught as a composer. Unlike his great friend Felix Mendelssohn, Schumann was not a child prodigy. Ah, Clara, what divine happiness there is in composing for the voice! I would like to sing like the nightingale and die of it!” Farewell, my Clara! Sounds and music are killing me at this moment and I feel that I could die of them. Like a man possessed, he encapsulated the essence of his creative facility in an excited letter to Clara: “Since yesterday morning I have written 27 pages of music of which all I can tell you is that while composing them I was laughing and crying with joy. In one four-month period during 1840 alone, Schumann produced nearly 150 songs of supreme quality. When composing his song cycles Dichterliebe, Liederkreis (two sets) and Frauenliebe und -Leben, and such ravishing collections of piano miniatures as Carnaval, Davidsbündlertänze and Kinderszenen, ideas would come to him so fast that he barely had time to write them down before the next one arrived. Yet whatever his majestic achievements in handling music on a large scale, it is Schumann’s unrivalled ability as a miniaturist that has secured him a place among the immortals. The music of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Grieg, Dvorˇák, Sibelius and many others is saturated with Schumannisms. His ingenious solutions to the problem of fusing symphonic form with profoundly lyrical ideas inspired a whole generation of composers, most notably the fast-emerging Nationalist schools. If Beethoven was an instrumentalist at heart, constructing his music out of structurally potent thematic ideas, Schumann felt that music should above all sing with an exultant surge. One of music’s supreme fantasists, Schumann brought a new lyrical impulse to the German strongholds of the symphony, sonata and concerto. That is why my compositions are sometimes difficult to understand, because they are connected with different interests and sometimes striking, because everything extraordinary that happens impresses me, and impels me to express it in music.” Internationally renowned for her extraordinary lyricism, violist Kim Kashkashian joins the Borromeo String Quartet to bring PCMF’s inaugural Winter Warmer Festival to a heartwarming, radiant conclusion.As he memorably put it in an 1838 letter to Clara Wieck,just two years before their marriage: “I am affected by everything that goes on in the world and think it all over in my own way – politics, literature and people – and then I long to express my feelings and find an outlet for them in music. Best known for his monumental symphonies, Bruckner brings his mastery to the intimate realm of chamber music with a quintet filled with rich textures and expansive flourishes. Sibelius transports us to a world of Nordic landscapes, where a shimmering atmosphere intertwines with moments of quiet conversation. Location: 88 Bedford St, Portland, Maine 04101, USĮthereal beauty, profound majesty, and flashes of warmth… this delightful matinée is like hot cocoa by the fire after a wintry woods walk.
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