Valentin Klavierquartett - R. Schumann & Thieriot: Piano Quartets (2022)

The original autographic score, which has been in the holdings of the Bonn University Library only since 1974, unfortunately turned out to be incomplete. The Piano Quartet in C minor by the nineteen:year:old visionary Robert Schumann was published in 1979, but on closer examination of the sources this edition proved to be completely inadequate. However, a glance at Schumann's models, above all Schubert and Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia or even Ferdinand Ries, more than enables a stylistically fine completion of the left hand in the piano part. In this form our expert Joachim Draheim, as he himself writes, ""has once again put forward for discussion the young Schumann's youthful and impetuous stroke of genius. ""A further revision of the score, in part involving the consultation of additional sources such as the sketches from Schumann's so:called Studienbücher, was undertaken by Draheim in 2009. This version first appeared in print during the Schumann Year 2010 and is being heard here for the first time on CD in this interpretation by the Valentin Quartet. Here this work of Schumann's youth shares the bill with the Piano Quartet No. 2 of Ferdinand Thieriot, a native son of Hamburg who may be described as an adherent of the classical composers and of Robert Schumann. Although the composer Thieriot was forgotten, unjustly so, for many years, here he proves to be a master of musical form and architecture : and in the future cpo will return to him for a closer look.