The original sketch for Schumann’s C-major Symphony took less than a week’s effort, but its completion, delayed by bouts of failing health took nearly a year.
With Mendelssohn’s encour- agement, the task was finally completed and Mendelssohn led the premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on Novem- ber 5, 1846. The remarkably cooperative (and appreciative) Mendelssohn agreed to a second performance two weeks later. For this occasion, Schumann made substantial changes in the orchestration, including what turned out to be a magnificent inspi- ration: the addition of the trombones of the present edition.
The heroic opening movement and the whiplash scherzo are followed by the yearning, ecstatic adagio – to more than a few ears the quintessential Romantic slow movement – and a triumphant finale, “in which I am myself again,” Schumann wrote, referring to the fact that he had suffered another nervous seizure after completing the Adagio.
Here is Eliot Gardiner to conduct this glorious and tragic music:
