Saturday, June 15, 2013

Schumann: Album for the Young

I cannot sufficiently praise the brilliance of this collection.  Starting with the very first piece Schumann touches the essence of piano playing while giving distilled paradigms of composition in various genres: lyric, ironic, completely serious, teasing, it is all there.

The longer I live, the more I teach, the greater my respect for these jewels.  Too bad we think we outgrow them just because they were required when we were 9 years old.