Schumann / Chopin: 200th anniversary
The German romantic, who
loved words no less than music, and the Polish melancholic who preferred a
witty jest to long-winded descriptions – two composers of antithetical
personality, but who are repeatedly named in the same breath. Both of them were
born in 1810, one of them in the idyllically rural Żelazowa Wola near Warsaw,
the other in the Saxon town of Zwickau. And both of them died early, Chopin of
tuberculosis, Schumann of the consequences entailed by a severe psychosis.
While Schumann’s parents insisted on his embracing a respectable career, and
compelled him to study law, Chopin’s parents did everything to prepare their
son for a life in the world of music. As a child, he performed in the homes of
the city’s aristocracy, and later he was sent to the world’s most prestigious
musical centres, to establish himself as a pianist. Berlin and Vienna were
failures, but in Paris he finally gained some acceptance. Though he avoided the
large concert halls, preferring private salons as a platform, he nonetheless
became famous. Schumann, by contrast, endured a protracted struggle to become a
recognised pianist in Leipzig, and ultimately failed, due to his own physical
inadequacies. At the same time, abandoning his career as a pianist meant he extended
the spectrum of his compositional range. While Chopin all his life composed
well-nigh solely for the piano, Schumann gradually broadened his range to cover
all genres. Nonetheless, Schumann sincerely admired Chopin’s work, as was
repeatedly confirmed in reviews and letters. It remains doubtful whether this
recognition was reciprocated. At any rate, the 200th anniversary of
their births offers an opportunity to get more intimately acquainted with the
lives and works of these two composers – not least at the Rheingau Music
Festival, which will be hosting numerous concerts for its Chopin and Schumann retrospective!
