# Bunte Blätter (Schumann)



## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

This collection is usually described as a repository for odds and ends that Schumann chose to omit from earlier works (and I think this is largely accurate), and while I have always liked specific pieces, I never thought of it as one of his major works.

I think I was wrong - maybe one could say it doesn't add up to a single, cohesive whole, but I think it contains some of Schumann's best.

This performance by Grigory Sokolov is beautiful:






What do others think? How does this collection stand up to Schumann's other major piano works?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Can someone confirm when Schumann wrote this? Despite the large opus number I believe it’s quite an early piece, same period as the fantasy. 

I disagree with the suggestion in the opening post that it comes across as a rag bag.

As far as performance goes, who actually performs the whole collection? I can only find Volodos with 14 pieces, but there must be more. 

Am I right to think that it was avoided by early pianists - no Cortot, no Moiseiewitch, no Horowitz . . . ? Russians seem to have taken it under their wing, with all the usual suspects recording some of it - Sofronitsky, Grinberg, Bashkirov, Pletnev, Richter, Koroliov. I can find nothing on a period piano. Bashkirov is particularly impressive.


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

From what I've read here and there, some of the pieces were originally intended for _Kinderszenen_ and others for _Carnaval_. Others I assume may have been composed later.

Some details from Henle can be found here. It looks like all were composed in the late 1830s and early 1840s. _Edit: Wikipedia says 1834-1849._


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> As far as performance goes, who actually performs the whole collection? I can only find Volodos with 14 pieces, but there must be more.


Louis Lortie has recorded the 14 pieces on Chandos - I cannot comment on the relative quality of the performance as it the only recording I have heard.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I enjoyed the live performance from Sokolov. He has natural affinity for Schumann. Thanks. Do you know if it's available commercially, on CD?

Mandryka asks, "As far as performance goes, who actually performs the whole collection? I can only find Volodos with 14 pieces, but there must be more."

To give an overview, Sviatoslav Richter recorded all 14 pieces for Eurodisc/JVC in the studio in 1971. That has long been my 'go to' recording of the complete Bunter Blatter, Op. 99 (along with Clara Haskil and Dmitri Bashkirov playing excerpts):






There are also a number of excellent live recordings by Richter, too, such as his remarkable live performance in Napoli in 1969: 



. Though Richter didn't always play all the pieces in concert, such on his BBC radio recording.

As noted, Clara Haskil is another pianist who was exceptional in this music, but she only recorded nos. 1-8:






Even so, I wouldn't want to be without Haskil's recording. She's one of the greatest Schumann pianists I've heard in my life. (Check out her incredible Abegg Variations, if you don't know it, as no one can touch her in these works, IMO, not even Richter:










and her Kinderszenen, Waldszenen, etc.)

I agree that Dmitri Bashkirov is likewise exceptional in this music, and he recorded most of them--11 out of the 14:






I also like Michel Block's 1977 complete recording of the Bunte Blatter for EMI, & consider Block to be an underrated Schumann pianist; however, to my knowledge it's never been issued on CD:






Other notable Schumann pianists who've recorded all 14 pieces of the Bunte Blatter include Balázs Szokolay (live): 



, Laurent Cabasso: 



, Eric le Sage, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Louis Lortie, Reine Gianoli, Claire Désert, Florian Uhlig (broken up over two Hänssler albums from his complete Schumann survey), Peter Frankl, Karl Engel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7vOb1Yq3uY; as well as Lars Vogt, Finghin Collins: 



, Evgeni Koroliov, Jean Martin: 



, Arcady Volodos: 



, Idil Biret, and Dénes Varjon.

On a period piano, Tobias Koch plays all 14 works well, but I'm not crazy about the sound of the historical piano that he's chosen: 



.

9 pieces: Maria João Pires:












etc.

5-8 pieces: Clara Haskil (8), Maria Grinberg: 



, Vladimir Sofronitsky(8): 



, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Feltsman, Stefan Vladar, and Veronica Jochum.

4 pieces: Youri Egorov on EMI. EDIT: I see there is a live 1987 concert performance from Egorov on You Tube of the complete Bunte Blatter. Which isn't one that I previously knew about: 



.


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

Josquin13 said:


> I enjoyed the live performance from Sokolov. He has natural affinity for Schumann. Thanks. *Do you know if it's available commercially, on CD?*


Unfortunately I'm not sure.

Thank you for sharing so many recordings! I'll be checking these out.


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

My memory is certainly starting to play tricks on me I have another recording of all 14 pieces by Dana Ciocarlie in her live complete solo piano box.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Can someone confirm when Schumann wrote this? Despite the large opus number I believe it's quite an early piece, same period as the fantasy.
> 
> I disagree with the suggestion in the opening post that it comes across as a rag bag.
> 
> ...


Yes, if someone could try to find the year of composition of each of the miniatures (though apparently some were emended near the date of publication but originally conceived a decade or so earlier) that would be very helpful. As for recordings of the complete set, I only know Richter's. A very hit or miss pianist for me, he does a pretty good job here.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Josquin13 said:


> I enjoyed the live performance from Sokolov. He has natural affinity for Schumann. Thanks. Do you know if it's available commercially, on CD?
> 
> Mandryka asks, "As far as performance goes, who actually performs the whole collection? I can only find Volodos with 14 pieces, but there must be more."
> 
> ...


Thanks! Listening to the Koch now, sounds great. I think - if anything - the problem is with the acoustics of the studio, not the piano.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> I disagree with the suggestion in the opening post that it comes across as a rag bag.


Care to elaborate on the coherence you perceive in this set? I am going to be playing them on the piano soon.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist writes,

"Thanks! Listening to the Koch now, sounds great. I think - if anything - the problem is with the acoustics of the studio, not the piano."

I didn't think of that. Yes, you may be right. Antique pianos don't sound very good when they're poorly mic'd. & the engineers may have mic'd his instrument too closely, and in an unflattering acoustic. But I agree with you that Koch is an interesting Schumann pianist, & his 'period' interpretation of the Bunte Blatter is fascinating.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Yes, if someone could try to find the year of composition of each of the miniatures (though apparently some were emended near the date of publication but originally conceived a decade or so earlier) that would be very helpful.


Here is an English translation of some notes which I've condensed on the dating of these pieces by Dr. Ernst Herttrich, Head of the Beethoven-Archiv, the research center at the Beethoven-Haus and editor of Schumann's complete works for piano.

Drei Stücklein - The date 1839 in the first edition is not entirely correct. The three pieces were probably written in December 1838.

Albumblatt I, Novellette, Marsch, Abendmusik - The dates in the first edition are 1841, 1838, 1843 and 1841. Since there are no surviving autographs for these pieces, the information concerning them cannot be authenticated.

Albumblätter II and IV - Date in the first edition each time 1838. Schumann notated the two pieces on the recto and verso of a single sheet. The titles read Fata Morgana / (1837) and Jugendschmerz / (1839). The different dates on the two sides of the same sheet, along with the external appearance of these dates, possibly suggest that Schumann did not write the manuscript until 1850, when he prepared it expressly as the source for the planned album.

Albumblatt III - Date in the first edition 1836. The beginning of the piece with the letter notes ab-c-b (in German notation as-c-h) clearly alludes to the piece's connection with the Carnaval op. 9. In this cycle, Schumann honoured his fiancée Ernestine von Fricken by beginning all the pieces with the letter notes ab-c-b or ab-c-eb-b which spell out the name of the town of Asch, where Ernestine lived. However, Carnaval was composed in the winter of 1834-35. The year given in the first edition is therefore most likely incorrect.

Albumblatt V - The date 1838 in the first edition is confirmed and specified by the inscription in the autograph In Pauline Garcia's Stammbuch / August 1838.

Präludium - The date 1839 in the first edition is confirmed and specified by the heading Präludium, October 1839 in the autograph.

Scherzo - Date in the first edition 1841. This piece is the piano reduction of a symphonic movement. In the course of the composition of the Bb major Symphony op. 38, the first version of the d minor Symphony op. 120 and the work titled Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale op. 52, Schumann, as he wrote on 26 September 1841 to Eduard Krüger, found himself completely "fired up" and had begun working on a further symphonic composition in September, which was ultimately left in the form of a sketch. Only the Scherzo was completed, albeit solely in the present piano version.

Geschwindmarsch - Date in the first edition 1849. The piece was written at the same time as the Vier Märsche op. 76, thus in the aftermath of the revolution of 1849.


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

I was not familiar with this opus. My first impression is that it's pretty but needs to grow on me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Care to elaborate on the coherence you perceive in this set? I am going to be playing them on the piano soon.


I agree with Tobias Kotch about this (whose recording I recommend enthusiastically)



> ]At first glance, the Bunte Blätter (Leaves of Many Colors) and Albumblätter collections appear to be quite haphazard. Yet, of all Schumann's works for piano, these have
> exercised a special attraction for me. The collections fascinatingly combine flashes of
> brilliant genius by the young Schumann with those of the mature composer, who was
> in a completely different way was anticipating the future of classical music, in a collection assembled by Schumann himself. How little the heterogeneous parts of each
> ...


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