Few composers embody the spirit of late-Romantic music like Robert Schumann. Known for his extraordinary talent in evoking figures and feelings through music, Schumann could, as one childhood friend recalled, “sketch the dispositions of his friends on the piano so exactly that everyone burst into laughter at the accuracy.”¹ This talent, which enables a composer to translate the intangible essence of a person into music, sits at the intersection of programmatic music (evoking specific characters or scenes) and absolute music—a tension that defined much of Schumann’s career. The old guard believed that music should rely only on its own powers to draw emotion out of listeners while the new wave, lead by luminaries like Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, thought that music which evoked people, places and philosophies held the potential to transcend all previous compositions and become a new, all consuming, form of art.²

It is as Schumann moves between these camps, from the old to the new, that he writes Fantasie in C, Op. 17. The Fantasie is a thing all its own; both a deeply referential letter of longing to Schumann’s absent love (and eventual wife) Clara Wieck, and an emotionally complex musical continuum absent the discrete forms of truly programmatic music. The Fantasie is a roiling map of Schumann’s internal landscape, the characters of the drama are agony, longing, hope, and uncertainty, and these are presented in their primordial aspect, with no clear barriers demarking them.

For a performer to capture the complexity and emotional depth of the Fantasie would be hard enough were it not also one of the most technically demanding of all Schumann’s repertoire. The pianist is called to play complex and expressive flurries with the left hand while the right hand dances its own melodies, often in the opposite direction. The piece is so complex that, on its release, it was immediately recognized as reserved for the elite among concert pianists.³ These two barriers to entry—deep emotive expressiveness and technical rigor—surround Fantasie in C to this day, and it is these barriers which make the task faced by rising star Marco Mantovani so daunting.

Mantovani, at 32 years old, is at the very beginning of what promises to be an illustrious career and has chosen Schumann as the rock upon which that career will be founded. In an interview with Flagey.be, the young pianist said that what drew him to Schumann was the composer’s ability to draw together tradition and innovation, and in Fantasie in C we see exactly this on display⁴: The piece loosely adheres to a three-movement sonata form, but in all other respects breaks with convention, bypassing the standard exposition, development, and recapitulation in favor of a style that’s both freer and more emotionally charged. Thematic moments, such as the musical transcription of Clara’s initials, recur throughout the piece according to Schumann’s own sympathetic rule rather than any strict framework.

The three movements unfold as follows: the first is by far the most impassioned, written during a time when Schumann was separated from his love. This separation—filled with heights and valleys, with yearning—permeates every note. This movement relies on the pianist’s ability to make us feel withdrawal and, more so than triumph itself, the possibility of ecstatic reunion. The second movement is the most technically difficult and, by extension, the most emotionally demanding of the three. The performer is asked to play a schizophrenic and challenging march without losing sight of the emotional stakes that Schumann set out in the first movement. Characteristically, the second movement presents a soul in contemplation of its inspiration and love, a thing at once playful and full of pathos. The third and final movement sees Schumann given over completely to his creative internality; compared to the highs and lows of the first movement, and the energetic overabundance of the second, the third is whispers and thunder that eventually resolve themselves into serenity.

So this is the challenge that the young Mantovani has set himself, and with what is he armed? With his technical virtuosity, more on that later, and his youth—and what could be more helpful in interpreting and conveying the contusions of young love than to yourself be young? 

The result is a recording that reveals previously unseen facets of Schumann’s Fantasie. Mantovani proves himself more than a match for the technical demands of the piece, particularly in the left-hand trills of the first movement and the frenetic pace of the second. One never feels that the music is slipping out of his control and, as a result, there is time enough for the pianist to submerge himself in the emotionality of Schumann’s score. But it is here that the problem and, potentially, the revelation of Mantovani’s approach to the Fantasie appears: one wonders if we are listening to the feelings of the pianist or the composer. 

The first movement, which so often expresses the pain of distance (see, for instance, recordings by Chilean master Claudio Arrau) sounds self-assured and victorious under Mantovani’s hands. Listening to this recording one hears the hours of effort poured into mastering the technically impenetrable second movement and the grinning joy that Mantovani feels at having yoked it as thoroughly as he has. That a piece traditionally so full of doubt and emotional ambiguity can be made to feel so energetic is a marvel, and in achieving this marvel Mantovani succeeds in recasting the character of Schumann entirely. Mantovani’s Schumann is caught in the whirlwind of his emotions, no longer an observer of himself but an extension of his internality into his marvelous technical skills. Mantovani reveals a second Schumann who is not merely a tortured poet reading the content of his soul into the world, but a vibrating string, plucked by circumstance and vibrating keenly in the listener’s ear.

Mantovani’s rendition of Fantasie in C succeeds in revealing an unexpected vigor in Schumann’s work and casts new light on the piece’s emotional landscape. Whether this reflects Mantovani’s own perspective or a hidden facet of Schumann is open to interpretation—but in this fresh, energetic performance, Mantovani has undeniably made Fantasie in C his own.

-Matthew Young

For those interested in hearing Schumann’s Fantasie in C, Op. 17 as performed by Marco Mantovani, tune in this Thursday afternoon (11/14) at 1pm to 89.7 WCPE, TheClassicalStation.org or via our app where we’ll be playing the piece in its entirety!