“I’ve been at the piano all week, composing and writing and laughing and crying, all at the same time,” wrote Robert Schumann to his beloved Clara Wieck from Vienna in March 1839. “You will find this state of affairs nicely evoked in my Opus 20, the grand Humoreske.”
The Humoreske is one of Schumann’s most inspired creations. An elusive masterpiece, it is not one of his easiest works to follow, which may have contributed to its unjust neglect.
Clara refrained from playing it in public, fearing it might be too inaccessible to audiences. In order to understand it, Schumann stressed that one must first have a feeling for Humor.
The Humoreske is certainly a work in which a mosaic-like array of constantly shifting moods and characters is contained within its many episodes. These range from inward-looking poetry to manic exuberance in an endless stream of unpredictability. All this, however, is bound together by subtle relationships, giving this substantial work an organic unity.
Schumann once referred to the Humoreske as his “most melancholy composition,”
Here is pianist Seong-Jin Cho to play this music for you:
