Schumann’s Märchenbilder, (Fairytale Pictures) is a relatively late work, composed while Schumann was in residence at Düsseldorf as Director of Music.
This masterwork shows the composer in the idiom he knew best: a series of meticulously crafted and highly diverse vignettes. Märchenbilder consists of several highly contrasting short movements, each a complete entity unto itself in terms of character, tempo, and variety of colors. Schumann excelled in the world of the miniature, where his many moods and ideas were compared and contrasted to one another in small gems of artistic expression.
Märchenbilder consists of four movements:
The first movement opens the piece with a searching, somewhat melancholy feel in D minor.
The second movement titled “Lebhaft” (Lively) utilizes a dotted figure to give a sense of buoyancy and lift in answer to the first movement.
The third movement, titled “Rasch” (Fast) employs the more virtuosic aspects of the instrument to a whirlwind sense of character.
The final movement is the real jewel, ending the work in D major, with a sense of resignation and a tinge of yearning.
Here is Violist Tabea Zimmermann to demonstrate this lovely music:
