A great Romantic love is celebrated in ardent fashion
The Strad Issue: January 2025
Description: A great Romantic love is celebrated in ardent fashion
Musicians: Christian-Pierre La Marca (cello) Jean-Frédéric Neuburger (piano) Philharmonia Orchestra/Raphaël Merlin
Works: C. Schumann: Three Romances op.22, Piano Concerto – Romanze; Ich stand in dunklen Träumen. R. Schumann: Cello Concerto; Fantasiestücke op.73; Adagio and Allegro op.70; Three Romances op.94; ‘F–A–E’ Sonata – Intermezzo; Widmung, Du bist wie eine Blume; Träumerei; works by Brahms, Kopatchinskaja, Neuburger, Ross and Waksman
Catalogue number: NAÏVE V7364 (2 CDs)
LOVE LETTERS
The love letters of the title are both the missives and the music which Robert and Clara Schumann wrote for each other during their long courtship and subsequent marriage. French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca has devised a two-disc tribute to the pair, with the emotion behind the letters convincingly brought alive in his playing.
Ever the innovator, La Marca includes his own arrangements of works by Clara as well as some contemporary perspectives on the love letter theme. Kopatchinskaja’s twittering unaccompanied SMS and Waksman’s brittle, tragic Replika about dating a personalised chatbox bring us right up to the present, while Ross’s very effective Désenvoyé (‘Unsent’), with overtones of Webern, has the two instruments coming together then spiralling into space.
La Marca’s sensitive playing transports us into a realm of freedom and fantasy. His lightness of touch and haunting pianissimos highlight Schumann’s dreamy side in the Fantasiestücke op.73, which is again evident in his arrangement of ‘Träumerei’, blissfully relaxed and carefree.
The perfectly balanced sound and clarity with which La Marca’s late 18th-century Neapolitan instrument is captured in Schumann’s Cello Concerto, sweetly singing in the high register, is not quite matched for the composer’s works with piano. The faster moments in the concerto remain rather earthbound, but the cello duet in the slow movement, and the Romanze from Clara’s Piano Concerto, with solo piano (Clara) and cello (Robert) duetting, brings us right to heart of what this disc is about.
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