Playing Schumann Again for the First Time

Bobby Mitchell

How can one learn to improvise convincingly within the context of the nineteenth-century piano repertoire? And why is it important to improvise on this repertoire in the twenty-first century? Taking the music of Robert Schumann (1810−56) as a departure point, Playing Schumann Again for the First Time proposes an answer to these questions through methods towards a pianistic practice that is driven by experimentation and strives to continually find more layers where improvisation can take place, both in sounding musical practice and in notation. These practice-based methods are contextualized by a discussion of the presence of improvisation in Western classical musical practice in the nineteenth century. They are then substantiated by an argument to use improvisation as a tool for rethinking the current performance practice of nineteenth-century music. Improvisation itself and the concepts driving this term will also be addressed: improvisation in musical performance will be described as a process guided by a feedback loop between mimesis and morphosis with which the practitioner engages using his or her individual cognitive and embodied approach to listening, forgetting, and conceptualizing; the results of which bear his or her own sonic signature. The knowledge gained in this project lies within the realm of what will be described as improvisation as practice, a category of improvisational behavior that circumvents the need to be presented as art and is rather intended for the development of one’s own music-making.

the cadenza at the end of the first movement:

a cadenza performed at the end of the second movement where Beethoven notates trills and a fermata:

HAYDN AND BEETHOVEN exhibits Phase B activity

In the recording studio while working on the music for the Haydn Fortepiano Sonatas, Adagio, and Variations album released by Alpha in 2014, I improvised nine versions of the cadenza I planned to include in the context of the Variations in F minor, Hob. XVII:6. The cadenza comes at a point in the final variation where the music slows to a cadential point and Haydn notates a fermata. Improvising a cadenza in such a situation is common while performing concerti, so I was inspired to do so here as well. This audio file is the cadenza the sound engineer and I chose to include on the disc:

To the right are eight other recorded improvisations I performed in the studio within the context of this cadential point in Haydn's score. The decision to choose the recording above was made a couple of months after the studio sessions and after having listened back to all the recordings.

Video footage of cadenzas performed in the context of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto during a May 2018 tour with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Philippe Herreweghe can be found here below. These cadenzas were performed live in concert.

an Eingang before the return of the rondo theme in the third movement:

the cadenza in the third movement:

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