Album fur die Jugend, Op.68 (Album for the Young)

"These short piano pieces, written in 1848 by Schumann for use by his own children, especially his eldest daughter, Marie, who was seven at the time, are hardly ever played in concert and have always been in the shadow of their ostensibly more accomplished and complex colleagues, the Kinderszenen of 1838. The latter, reflecting an adult view of childhood in a sometimes rather nostalgic manner - the often played Traumerei comes to mind - have been recorded by nearly all the great pianists at some stage in their career, but Album fur die Jugend, which offers 43 short pieces ascending in difficulty from the simple Melodie to a fugue and a rather serious 'figured chorale,' has been more or less neglected. Rico Gulda, talented son of the famous, late Friedrich Gulda, has come to the rescue of these delightfully 'young' pieces and has recorded them with great tenderness and thought. With his differentiated touch, he brings out the character of these miniatures, treating each as a mini-tableau of its own, with fine detail etched in, and subtle colouring. His shaping of these children's studies is exquisite, bringing out their individual qualities in clear lines while maintaining an innocence, even in the more complex and demanding pieces of the second half of the album. Recommended."
- Richard Perry, Ottawa Citizen, Sunday March 31, 2002

"Rico Gulda, son of Friedrich Gulda, brings his own youthful ardor to the set, and succeeds very well in capturing the essence of these pieces. Many moods and scenes are portrayed by the composer, and Gulda interprets each with a good deal of imagination, expressing tenderness, joy, dashing fervor, or whatever feeling is called for... he is a faithful and gratifying interpreter of Schumann's music."
- Susan Kagan, Fanfare, March/April 2002

"The young Rico Gulda, son of the late Friedrich (a major Schumann pianist in his own right), brings to the entire series a 'personal' boldness, definition, and breadth of colour-range that kept me gripped."
- Max Loppert, BBC Music Magazine, December 2001

"Schumann's famous teaching cycle Album fur die Jugend may make modest technical demands (well, not always, truth be told!), but the work embodies some of the composer's loveliest ideas. Pianist Rico Gulda (son of the late pianist Friedrich Gulda) seeks to wring the most music out of these 43 little pieces, and generally succeeds. He shapes them with a myriad of colors, tonal shadings, and voicings. Repeats provide opportunities for Gulda to play with these elements, perhaps to emphasize the left hand more the second time around (like in Stuckchen), or add the una corda pedal here and there. ...Kleine Studie's arpeggiated figures flow with simple understatement and Winterszeit I & II are ravishingly characterized, in contrast to Michelangeli's slow-motion, lobotomized EMI renditions. I look forward to more recordings by this sensitive, intelligent pianist.
- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday, October 25, 2001

Robert Schumann is in many ways typical of the age in which he lived, combining in his music a number of the principal characteristics of Romanticism, as he did in his life. Born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of a bookseller, publisher and writer, he showed an early interest in literature and was to make a name for himself in later years as a writer and as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a journal launched in 1834. His father encouraged his literary and musical interests and at one time thought of sending him to study with Weber, a proposal that was abandoned with the death of the latter, closely followed by the death of Schumann's father.

Schumann's career now followed a more conventional course. In 1828 he entered the University of Leipzig, where his attention to his studies was as intermittent as it was to be the following year at Heidelberg. He was eventually able to persuade his mother and guardian that he should be allowed to study music under the well- known piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, whose own energies had been directed with some intensity towards the training of his daughter Clara, a pianist of prodigious early talent. Schumann's ambitions as a pianist, however, were frustrated by a weakness in the fingers, whatever its true cause, and his other musical studies had, at the very least, lacked application. Nevertheless in the 1830s he wrote a great deal of music for the piano, often in the form of shorter, genre pieces, with some extra-musical literary or autobiographical association. There was an affair with one of Wieck's pupils, later broken off, but by 1835 he had begun to turn his attention to Clara Wieck, nine years his junior. Wieck had good reason to object to the liaison. His daughter had a career before her as a concert performer and Schumann had shown signs of instability of character, whatever his abilities as a composer might be. Matters were taken to an extreme when resort was had to litigation, in order to prevent what Wieck saw as a disastrous marriage.

It was not until 1840 that Schumann was eventually able to marry Clara, after her father's legal attempts to oppose the match had finally failed. The couple married in September, remaining first in Leipzig, although journeys took place for concert appearances by Clara, generally accompanied by her husband, whose position was of lesser distinction. In 1844 they moved to Dresden, where it seemed that Schumann might recover from the bouts of depression that he had suffered in the earlier days of marriage. Here again no official position seemed to offer itself and it was only in 1849 that the prospect of employment arose, this time in Düsseldorf, where Schumann took up his position as director of music in 1850.

Mendelssohn had enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Düsseldorf authorities, and Schumann, much less skilled in administration and conducting, proved even less able to cope with the difficulties that arose. The pressures on him led to a complete nervous break-down in 1853 and final years spent in an asylum at Endenich, where he died in 1856.

As a composer Schumann's early piano pieces had been followed in 1840 by the composition of song after song, some 150 in the space of a year, a period that had brought the pressures of Wieck's law-suit, although all had ended in a measure of final happiness. Clara Schumann now encouraged her husband to tackle larger forms, major orchestral works and operas. This did not prevent Schumann writing more songs and more shorter piano pieces, both of these being forms in which he excelled. His last songs and last significant short piano pieces were written in 1853.

A year after their marriage in 1840 Clara Schumann gave birth to their first child, Marie. A second daughter, christened Elise, followed in 1843, and a third, Julie, in March 1845, after the family had moved to Dresden. Emil, born in 1845, died a little over a year later. Ludwig was born in 1848 and Eugenie and Felix after the final move to Düsseldorf. It was in 1848, however, after the completion of the ambitious opera Genoveva and while contemplating the composition of his music for Byron's Manfred, that Schumann turned his attention to a set of short pieces, intended, in the first instance, for the birthday of his eldest daughter, Marie. The project grew, as Schumann happily enlarged the collection, for which his growing children had a very practical use. The reluctance of his publisher was overcome and the final set of 43 pieces was published to his profit, augmented, in a second edition, by a set of Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln (Instructions to Young Musicians). Schumann later added to this educational project a set of songs, Liederalbum für die Jugend, Opus 79, (Song Album for the Young), and in 1853 Drei Clavier-Sonaten für die Jugend, Opus 118 (Three Piano Sonatas for the Young), with a set of duets for children, Kinderball, Opus 130 (Children's Ball).

The Jugendalbum differs, needless to say, from the familiar Kinderszenen (Scenes of Childhood) of 1838, which reflect an adult view of childhood. Particularly familiar are the Soldiers' March and a little piece, once all too widely heard in emphatic juvenile performance and then generally known as The Merry Peasant. Hunting and riding call for appropriate harmonies and rhythms and Knecht Ruprecht, the traditional servant of St Nicholas, is evoked. Three of the pieces are designated by a triangular arrangement of stars, and include reminiscences of other works with a personal resonance for the composer. The second part of the work also includes a short piece, Erinnerung, in memory of Mendelssohn, whose early and sudden death took place in Leipzig in 1847. The Nordisches Lied (Nordic Song) is a tribute to Mendelssohn's successor as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Danish composer Niels W.Gade, whose surname provides the notes that start the theme. The two winter scenes, Winterszeit, present a literary picture of winter, outdoors and indoors, the latter reflected in a hinted reference to a popular German song. The collection, which increases in complexity with its little fugue and ornamented chorale, ends appropriately with an optimistic glance at the New Year, the Sylvesterlied, in a particularly fruitful period of Schumann's creative career, a period that was soon to end in tragedy.
- Keith Anderson