Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 1 "Spring" will be performed by the Jerzy Semkow Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra under Piotr Sułkowski on 24 April 2021 at 8.00 p.m., almost exactly 180 years after its premiere. We will also hear Schumann's Piano Concerto, op. 54. The solo part of this flagship piece representing Romanticism will be performed by Hubert Rutkowski.
"I am unable to write a concert for virtuosos, I must think of something else…" – those are the words Robert Schumann wrote to his fiancée Klara Wieck in 1839, when he came up with an idea to create a new type of a concert, so different from the ones that were so popular back then, the sole purpose of which was to showcase the soloist’s exquisite skills. The result of his Romantic revision of the classic genre was the one-part Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 48.
Schumann’s affection towards beautiful Klara can be heard in the first out of his four symphonies, called "Spring", in reference to a poem by a Romantic poet Adolf Böttger that supposedly had been Schumann’s inspiration, and to the titles given to the four parts of the piece (later withdrawn). The piece was composed in one creative impulse, in only several weeks in early 1841. It premiered on 31 March of the same year under the baton of Schumann’s friend, Felix Mendelssohn.
Piotr Maculewicz
Media patronage: Polish Music Information Centre POLMIC.
Broadcast on YouTube channel and www.sinfoniaiuventus.pl.