Schumann on bus

Perhaps it was two years ago when I read an anecdote about Kempff. It was in the 1920s or early 30s, in his youth, once before playing Brahms Paganini Variations in an Italian town, he had no time but to get some bite in a bakery right in the street corner. When he went back with something like a sandwich to the backstage, a student of Liszt laughed at the situation, saying: Liszt would travel on chariot and only have dinner when getting well served with silverware.

So time changes. The settings, both for musicians and for the public have changed a lot. Young Mozart's tiring tour in Europe is too far away from our imagination when today we can get off work an hour earlier, rush to the airport and appear in a different city miles away for a night event (and get back to work the next morning). It has nothing to do with one's classical identity, to go to concerts in jeans, or to listen to Jazz before giving a recital. The musical mood perhaps has a different rhythm, perhaps it is more instant now, as our ways of speaking in the web2.0 era. 

OK. This noon, lost in random thoughts on bus, getting down from my new work place to the centre, a journey I had never done until this week, suddenly an exciting moment passed by my mind >_<

The cadenza in Schumann's Piano Concerto, in certain modulations, have such a similitude to Beethoven's penultimate sonata op. 110. Oh it may be only a conventional way of composition, but you should forgive a muggle-born who has never been to Hogwarts. So I cannot wait to release this joy of my own:

First, thinking of the initial part:

 Schumann op. 54 Mov. I

Evidently, it remembered me of the poetic and calm transition before the first theme got back (underlined in red) in Beethoven's sonata:

 Beethoven op. 110 Mov. I

However, Schumann gave more space of game in the free cadenza and did not reach the theme immediately - He continued the transition with a more passionate section, which finally leads to the theme (underlined in red):

 Schumann op. 54 Mov. I

But this also coincides with Beethoven if we take his second fugue which was more elaborated - before reaching the final reappearance (underlined in red), he also wrote, with no hurry, two modulation units, connected but different:

 Beethoven op. 110 Mov. III

By the way, I remember András Schiff specially reminded of the second tempo mark "Meno allegro" in his lecture and disagreed with the tend to play it too fast. This may differ from Schumann's work which requires forte and uses chords to contrast with the first modulation.

So this has been my small musical enrichment of today. Actually life is so full of them, every day, impossible to collect all. I remember in past winter when I sight-played the first movement for the first time, I got extremely moved when I arrived at the end of the cadenza finding that detail (marked in blue):

It was so clear but I had never never observed it by listening to the concerto. Perhaps it is boring to continue with such random thoughts, but, as we are with Beethoven, no problem to get back...  

And, finally a hidden one:

I would have never paid any attention to the last inner notes if not told. It is the fugue!

Of course, it has taken me more than 2 hours to elaborate these evident findings. In the reality all passed in 20 seconds and I was more than satisfied. I got off at the next stop and had a quick lunch in a non-fast but fast restaurant called Viena which is 100% catalan, where the routine survivor got refreshed and prepared for the afternoon's work through an interview with Boulez.

Click: Article in Spanish