February 13, 2025 • 15 mins
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A quick note - Although I mentioned on the podcast that some of these cycles are hard to source on physical CDs, they mostly appear to be available via downloading and streaming services.
Here are the links to recordings:
Peter Frankl - https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8534580--robert-schumann-complete-music-for-piano-solo
Karl Engel - https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/schumann-luvre-de-piano-vol-2-karl-engel/3298490044506
Reine Gialoni - https://open.spotify.com/album/3cRQoJIPxvfrOPv2yVOOzC
Jörg Demus - https://www.amazon.com/Schumann-Complete-Piano-Jorg-Demus/dp/B000W99IPM
Jean-Pierre Marty - https://www.amazon.com/Schumann-Works-Piano-Oeuvres-Pour/dp/B001LPDIZC
Florian Uhlig - https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works-Piano-Florian-Uhlig/dp/B0BGM5B4BY
Eric Le Sage - https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8024256--schumann-project-eric-le-sage
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
(00:12):
recordings.
You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by clicking on the
link in the episode description.
Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano Maven Zoom meetings where we share listening
experiences and from time to time we have special guests and you also will receive some
(00:33):
free recorded goodies from my vast collection of piano treasures.
So please consider subscribing to help us reach out further into the piano community
and to keep this podcast afloat and in production.
A few months back I devoted an episode to discussing the Schumann C major fantasy, opus
(00:59):
17, and a listener wrote in to ask me if there were any pianists who had recorded complete
cycles of Schumann's piano music.
There certainly have been, but I had not really researched exactly how many pianists had recorded
complete Schumann cycles.
(01:21):
There really haven't been all that many to be honest and furthermore some so-called complete
Schumann cycles are more complete than others in terms of including various revised versions
of works or including early sketches or unpublished pieces and so on and so forth.
(01:43):
But basically all pianists who have amassed comprehensive Schumann cycles do include all
of the works with opus numbers plus other pieces that have long been a part of the proverbial
canon.
So I'm going to give you just a very general guide to some of the Schumann cycles past
(02:04):
and present without going into great detail.
This is just to tell you what's out there and what has been available and what might
hold your interest and some rarities that you might want to look out for.
At some later point I might delve into one or two of these cycles in much much more detail,
(02:26):
but for now here's just a general guide to what has been out there as far as Schumann
cycles are concerned.
Peter Frankel recorded a Schumann cycle for the Vox label and it's currently available
from Menuetto Classics in download format.
(02:46):
You can download lossless files of the whole cycle for around $50 and considering that's
the equivalent of 14 CDs I guess it's actually quite a bargain.
This is a very consistent and stylish Schumann cycle.
You're not going to want Peter Frankel to replace your favorite versions and the big
(03:10):
pieces, but you know nothing falls below a very high standard and I've enjoyed these
performances on and off for many years.
The pianist Carl Engel's Schumann cycle was originally recorded for the French Valois
label and they appeared on the Telefunken label during the LP era in these beautiful
(03:35):
boxes.
Anyway, the whole cycle was issued in Japan on CD and that edition is almost impossible
to find.
I happen to have it here, but I don't listen to it a lot, but there is much to admire,
especially in the strange introspective works like the morning songs.
(03:59):
Much of Waltzainen I like.
His late album Blatter I think are very beautiful.
His Carnival and C major fantasy are not the most ardent and red blooded around, but the
Kinderzehnen is beautiful and the Davidsbundler is really quite characterful.
The Davidsbundler tons.
I mean, have to add tons at the end of that.
(04:22):
That's a very volatile kind of piece and Carl Engel is not the most volatile pianist on the
block, but generally this cycle is more hit than miss and it's well worth hearing, but
I would not break the bank seeking it out.
The pianist René Giannoli recorded a Schumann cycle that first appeared on CD on individual
(04:48):
discs on the ADES label, A-D-E-S, and then it was boxed up on the accord label.
Universal Classics controls the copyrights.
But I have to say that this pianist was frankly way past her best when she came to make these
recordings.
(05:09):
Usually she's under tempo and quite effortful and you really have to wade through this collection
to find the best things, but by and large it is not a Schumann cycle that I would recommend.
But I would recommend the cycle with pianist Jörg Deymes.
It came out on the Nuova Era label at one time and I remember it was selling for next
(05:34):
to nothing in physical format and it's floated around in all kinds of incarnations.
Sometimes the recording quality is a little bit dry, but not always and generally Jörg
Deymes is a very strong and authoritative Schumann player.
I like his Chrysler Rihanna a lot and the C major fantasy is very good.
(05:56):
His third sonata, you know the so-called Concerto without Orchestra, I think really holds its
own against the competition.
And if you can find the cycle for not a whole lot of money, I would definitely get it.
Don't underestimate Jörg Deymes and Schumann.
I should mention a complete Schumann cycle on the Thorifon label with the pianist Franz
(06:21):
Voraber.
I haven't heard all of it to be perfectly frank.
I've only heard maybe three or four discs and that was years ago.
But I had mixed impressions about what I did here.
He can be kind of aggressive and even insensitive.
I'm thinking about the novelettin where he just barnstorms his way through some of the
(06:42):
pieces.
But this kind of approach actually proved pretty exciting in Carnival.
I guess it depends on the work.
So my jury is still out on the cycle and I really don't know in which format you can
find all of the volumes.
But there is one Schumann cycle that I've really grown quite fond of.
(07:06):
And I just recently found a secondhand copy of it because I missed it when it came out
the first time around.
It features the French pianist Donna Cio Carli.
Did I say that correctly?
C-I-O-C-A-R-L-I-E.
Dana or Donna.
(07:26):
Okay.
Dana Cio Carli.
And it's on the La Dolce Volta label.
And what makes this cycle interesting is that all of the performances were recorded live
in concert.
And there's a real sense of occasion and more than a few surges of adrenaline resulting
from her tendency toward animated tempos.
(07:50):
And it is true that she sometimes pushes her really terrific technique to the limits and
sometimes forces her sound.
But honestly that doesn't bother me in the heat of the moment because these are vibrant
recordings that really hold your attention.
But there's a lot of sensitivity.
I don't know why I think of Dana Cio Carli as something of a cross between Clara Haskell
(08:16):
and Alfred Courtauld.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
But I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from this set.
If you can find this set in physical format at a good price, grab it.
But you can find downloads.
But the downloads are all individual releases and they seem to be on the expensive side.
(08:38):
But this is a Schumann cycle that's definitely ripe for reissue.
I also want to mention an interesting, though only partial Schumann cycle because it's
kind of a curiosity.
And it's a set that I myself did not know about until only recently when I stumbled
upon a review published in a back issue of International Piano Magazine.
(09:03):
It features the late pianist and conductor Jean-Pierre Marty.
And he was known mainly as a collaborative pianist and as a conductor, not so much as
a virtuoso piano soloist.
The story behind this set is that Jean-Pierre Marty would spend several weeks each summer
(09:25):
at the summer home in Maine owned by Mr. Day Thorpe, who was the manager of the Washington
Opera where he would often conduct.
Jean-Pierre Marty would conduct, I mean.
So Mr. Day Thorpe was an amateur recording buff who owned very good recording equipment.
(09:46):
So apparently during the summer of 1969, Marty played through several Schumann sonatas that
he had recently learned.
And he allowed his friend to record him very informally, just straight playthroughs with
no editing.
And then Mr. Thorpe said to his friend, hey, why don't we record Schumann's complete piano
(10:08):
works just for fun?
So that's exactly what happened.
Jean-Pierre Marty started working on and playing through all of Schumann's piano works in opus
number order with Mr. Thorpe's tape recorder capturing it all.
These were just playthroughs in one take, no editing at all.
(10:29):
And these informal sessions spilled over into the next few summers of 1970 and 1971.
The project got as far as opus 32 and it never went any further.
But the tapes were rediscovered in 2007 and they all happened to be in surprisingly good
condition.
(10:49):
So the solstice label brought out a box set of these recordings.
Obviously the sound is hardly up to today's professional standards, but it is kind of
fun to hear this really fine pianist and musician go through Schumann on the fly, so to speak.
It's kind of like sitting in on an informal jam session or something like that.
(11:13):
So they're interesting recordings.
Unfortunately, this release has been way out of print for a long time.
I did finally find a copy at the Academy Records Store on 18th Street in New York City, which
is the largest secondhand record store for classical music in New York City.
(11:33):
And I saw a copy in the window.
I think they were selling it for $30.
It's eight CDs, but I grabbed it because I thought, you know, when am I ever going to
see this again?
And I've enjoyed it from time to time.
I suppose I also should mention the partial Schumann cycles that were recorded for commercial
(11:56):
release.
There was one with Claudio Aurao and one with Vladimir Ashkenazi.
And I think I will save discussion about those for another time.
But I do have two recent complete Schumann cycles to mention.
Florian Ullig's 17-disc Schumann survey for Henslert Classics stands out because it is
(12:20):
as comprehensive as possible, leaving no unpublished piece unaccounted for and leaving no sketch
unturned, so to speak.
So from a musicological standpoint, it's absolutely invaluable.
And the documentation and the annotations could not be better.
That said, I kind of find them to be an uneven interpreter.
(12:43):
I mean, the playing is always on a very high level, but it isn't consistently inspired
to my taste.
Sometimes the playing lacks ardency.
But as far as documentation is concerned and completeness, this is really quite unique.
However, if I have to mention the most consistently satisfying piano playing in a complete Schumann
(13:09):
cycle, that has to be from the pianist Eric Lassage.
He recorded all of Schumann's piano works on the Alpha label, and it's readily available
as a box set.
And he also recorded the complete Schumann chamber music with piano, also for Alpha.
(13:30):
He's a great technician.
He's a sensitive colorist, and he's always alert to inner voices and bass lines and asymmetric
phrases without resorting to eccentricity or overdoing it.
And I think I reviewed one of these volumes quite a while ago, and I wasn't terribly sold
(13:51):
on it, but it's really grown on me since.
And again, it's the consistency that has sold me on this box set.
But the other thing that distinguishes his Schumann playing is that Eric Lassage really
has that knack for hitting on just the right tempos.
There isn't a tempo that seems too fast or too slow.
(14:15):
You really can agree with all of his tempos, actually.
So for the most consistent performances by one pianist in all of Schumann with superb
engineering, I definitely would make the cycle on Alpha with Eric Lassage a priority purchase.
He's not going to make you forget about or part with your favorite reference versions
(14:39):
of certain Schumann works.
I mean, you're not going to toss out your Vladimir Horowitz-Chrysler-Jana or your Carnival
with Nelson Fréry or your C Major Fantasy with Sergio Fiorentino or your Kinje Zanin
with Yvonne Moravetz, but as I said, you're not going to find a more consistent Schumann
(15:00):
cycle out there than with Eric Lassage.
This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
guide to piano recordings.
Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to being with you for the next episode.
Take good care.
This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
(00:12):
recordings.
You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by clicking on the
link in the episode description.
Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano Maven Zoom meetings where we share listening
experiences and from time to time we have special guests and you also will receive some
(00:33):
free recorded goodies from my vast collection of piano treasures.
So please consider subscribing to help us reach out further into the piano community
and to keep this podcast afloat and in production.
A few months back I devoted an episode to discussing the Schumann C major fantasy, opus
(00:59):
17, and a listener wrote in to ask me if there were any pianists who had recorded complete
cycles of Schumann's piano music.
There certainly have been, but I had not really researched exactly how many pianists had recorded
complete Schumann cycles.
(01:21):
There really haven't been all that many to be honest and furthermore some so-called complete
Schumann cycles are more complete than others in terms of including various revised versions
of works or including early sketches or unpublished pieces and so on and so forth.
(01:43):
But basically all pianists who have amassed comprehensive Schumann cycles do include all
of the works with opus numbers plus other pieces that have long been a part of the proverbial
canon.
So I'm going to give you just a very general guide to some of the Schumann cycles past
(02:04):
and present without going into great detail.
This is just to tell you what's out there and what has been available and what might
hold your interest and some rarities that you might want to look out for.
At some later point I might delve into one or two of these cycles in much much more detail,
(02:26):
but for now here's just a general guide to what has been out there as far as Schumann
cycles are concerned.
Peter Frankel recorded a Schumann cycle for the Vox label and it's currently available
from Menuetto Classics in download format.
(02:46):
You can download lossless files of the whole cycle for around $50 and considering that's
the equivalent of 14 CDs I guess it's actually quite a bargain.
This is a very consistent and stylish Schumann cycle.
You're not going to want Peter Frankel to replace your favorite versions and the big
(03:10):
pieces, but you know nothing falls below a very high standard and I've enjoyed these
performances on and off for many years.
The pianist Carl Engel's Schumann cycle was originally recorded for the French Valois
label and they appeared on the Telefunken label during the LP era in these beautiful
(03:35):
boxes.
Anyway, the whole cycle was issued in Japan on CD and that edition is almost impossible
to find.
I happen to have it here, but I don't listen to it a lot, but there is much to admire,
especially in the strange introspective works like the morning songs.
(03:59):
Much of Waltzainen I like.
His late album Blatter I think are very beautiful.
His Carnival and C major fantasy are not the most ardent and red blooded around, but the
Kinderzehnen is beautiful and the Davidsbundler is really quite characterful.
The Davidsbundler tons.
I mean, have to add tons at the end of that.
(04:22):
That's a very volatile kind of piece and Carl Engel is not the most volatile pianist on the
block, but generally this cycle is more hit than miss and it's well worth hearing, but
I would not break the bank seeking it out.
The pianist René Giannoli recorded a Schumann cycle that first appeared on CD on individual
(04:48):
discs on the ADES label, A-D-E-S, and then it was boxed up on the accord label.
Universal Classics controls the copyrights.
But I have to say that this pianist was frankly way past her best when she came to make these
recordings.
(05:09):
Usually she's under tempo and quite effortful and you really have to wade through this collection
to find the best things, but by and large it is not a Schumann cycle that I would recommend.
But I would recommend the cycle with pianist Jörg Deymes.
It came out on the Nuova Era label at one time and I remember it was selling for next
(05:34):
to nothing in physical format and it's floated around in all kinds of incarnations.
Sometimes the recording quality is a little bit dry, but not always and generally Jörg
Deymes is a very strong and authoritative Schumann player.
I like his Chrysler Rihanna a lot and the C major fantasy is very good.
(05:56):
His third sonata, you know the so-called Concerto without Orchestra, I think really holds its
own against the competition.
And if you can find the cycle for not a whole lot of money, I would definitely get it.
Don't underestimate Jörg Deymes and Schumann.
I should mention a complete Schumann cycle on the Thorifon label with the pianist Franz
(06:21):
Voraber.
I haven't heard all of it to be perfectly frank.
I've only heard maybe three or four discs and that was years ago.
But I had mixed impressions about what I did here.
He can be kind of aggressive and even insensitive.
I'm thinking about the novelettin where he just barnstorms his way through some of the
(06:42):
pieces.
But this kind of approach actually proved pretty exciting in Carnival.
I guess it depends on the work.
So my jury is still out on the cycle and I really don't know in which format you can
find all of the volumes.
But there is one Schumann cycle that I've really grown quite fond of.
(07:06):
And I just recently found a secondhand copy of it because I missed it when it came out
the first time around.
It features the French pianist Donna Cio Carli.
Did I say that correctly?
C-I-O-C-A-R-L-I-E.
Dana or Donna.
(07:26):
Okay.
Dana Cio Carli.
And it's on the La Dolce Volta label.
And what makes this cycle interesting is that all of the performances were recorded live
in concert.
And there's a real sense of occasion and more than a few surges of adrenaline resulting
from her tendency toward animated tempos.
(07:50):
And it is true that she sometimes pushes her really terrific technique to the limits and
sometimes forces her sound.
But honestly that doesn't bother me in the heat of the moment because these are vibrant
recordings that really hold your attention.
But there's a lot of sensitivity.
I don't know why I think of Dana Cio Carli as something of a cross between Clara Haskell
(08:16):
and Alfred Courtauld.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
But I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from this set.
If you can find this set in physical format at a good price, grab it.
But you can find downloads.
But the downloads are all individual releases and they seem to be on the expensive side.
(08:38):
But this is a Schumann cycle that's definitely ripe for reissue.
I also want to mention an interesting, though only partial Schumann cycle because it's
kind of a curiosity.
And it's a set that I myself did not know about until only recently when I stumbled
upon a review published in a back issue of International Piano Magazine.
(09:03):
It features the late pianist and conductor Jean-Pierre Marty.
And he was known mainly as a collaborative pianist and as a conductor, not so much as
a virtuoso piano soloist.
The story behind this set is that Jean-Pierre Marty would spend several weeks each summer
(09:25):
at the summer home in Maine owned by Mr. Day Thorpe, who was the manager of the Washington
Opera where he would often conduct.
Jean-Pierre Marty would conduct, I mean.
So Mr. Day Thorpe was an amateur recording buff who owned very good recording equipment.
(09:46):
So apparently during the summer of 1969, Marty played through several Schumann sonatas that
he had recently learned.
And he allowed his friend to record him very informally, just straight playthroughs with
no editing.
And then Mr. Thorpe said to his friend, hey, why don't we record Schumann's complete piano
(10:08):
works just for fun?
So that's exactly what happened.
Jean-Pierre Marty started working on and playing through all of Schumann's piano works in opus
number order with Mr. Thorpe's tape recorder capturing it all.
These were just playthroughs in one take, no editing at all.
(10:29):
And these informal sessions spilled over into the next few summers of 1970 and 1971.
The project got as far as opus 32 and it never went any further.
But the tapes were rediscovered in 2007 and they all happened to be in surprisingly good
condition.
(10:49):
So the solstice label brought out a box set of these recordings.
Obviously the sound is hardly up to today's professional standards, but it is kind of
fun to hear this really fine pianist and musician go through Schumann on the fly, so to speak.
It's kind of like sitting in on an informal jam session or something like that.
(11:13):
So they're interesting recordings.
Unfortunately, this release has been way out of print for a long time.
I did finally find a copy at the Academy Records Store on 18th Street in New York City, which
is the largest secondhand record store for classical music in New York City.
(11:33):
And I saw a copy in the window.
I think they were selling it for $30.
It's eight CDs, but I grabbed it because I thought, you know, when am I ever going to
see this again?
And I've enjoyed it from time to time.
I suppose I also should mention the partial Schumann cycles that were recorded for commercial
(11:56):
release.
There was one with Claudio Aurao and one with Vladimir Ashkenazi.
And I think I will save discussion about those for another time.
But I do have two recent complete Schumann cycles to mention.
Florian Ullig's 17-disc Schumann survey for Henslert Classics stands out because it is
(12:20):
as comprehensive as possible, leaving no unpublished piece unaccounted for and leaving no sketch
unturned, so to speak.
So from a musicological standpoint, it's absolutely invaluable.
And the documentation and the annotations could not be better.
That said, I kind of find them to be an uneven interpreter.
(12:43):
I mean, the playing is always on a very high level, but it isn't consistently inspired
to my taste.
Sometimes the playing lacks ardency.
But as far as documentation is concerned and completeness, this is really quite unique.
However, if I have to mention the most consistently satisfying piano playing in a complete Schumann
(13:09):
cycle, that has to be from the pianist Eric Lassage.
He recorded all of Schumann's piano works on the Alpha label, and it's readily available
as a box set.
And he also recorded the complete Schumann chamber music with piano, also for Alpha.
(13:30):
He's a great technician.
He's a sensitive colorist, and he's always alert to inner voices and bass lines and asymmetric
phrases without resorting to eccentricity or overdoing it.
And I think I reviewed one of these volumes quite a while ago, and I wasn't terribly sold
(13:51):
on it, but it's really grown on me since.
And again, it's the consistency that has sold me on this box set.
But the other thing that distinguishes his Schumann playing is that Eric Lassage really
has that knack for hitting on just the right tempos.
There isn't a tempo that seems too fast or too slow.
(14:15):
You really can agree with all of his tempos, actually.
So for the most consistent performances by one pianist in all of Schumann with superb
engineering, I definitely would make the cycle on Alpha with Eric Lassage a priority purchase.
He's not going to make you forget about or part with your favorite reference versions
(14:39):
of certain Schumann works.
I mean, you're not going to toss out your Vladimir Horowitz-Chrysler-Jana or your Carnival
with Nelson Fréry or your C Major Fantasy with Sergio Fiorentino or your Kinje Zanin
with Yvonne Moravetz, but as I said, you're not going to find a more consistent Schumann
(15:00):
cycle out there than with Eric Lassage.
This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
guide to piano recordings.
Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to being with you for the next episode.
Take good care.
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