Schumann: Piano Sonatas for the Young

Robert Schumann’s dramatic life and transcendent music can be considered an archetype for the Romantic age in which he lived. Most of the works on this recording were written towards the end of his life, and Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn) was completed just months before Schumann’s final breakdown and confinement to the asylum in Endenich, its strange beauty infused with ideas of double identity. Schumann had his own daughters in mind for the utterly charming Klavier-Sonaten für die Jugend (Piano Sonatas for the Young), while the earlier sonata movements have recently been transcribed and edited from the composer’s incomplete or discarded sketches.