Program Notes

Kreisleriana by Robert Schumann


Kreisleriana, Op. 16, is a composition in eight movements by Robert Schumann for solo piano, titled Phantasien fur das Pianoforte, written in April 1838. Dedicated to Frédéric Chopin, it is a very dramatic work and is considered to be one of Schumann's finest compositions.

The work's erstwhile programme, or at any rate the basis for a depiction of psychological music-drama, is based on the character Johannes Kreisler from works of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Like the kaleidoscopic Kreisler, each number has multiple contrasting sections, resembling the imaginary musician's manic-depression, and recalling Florestan and Eusebius, the two imaginary characters of Schumanns inner vision (representing his impulsive and dreamy sides, respectively). Johannes Kreisler appeared in three books by E. T. A. Hoffmann, most notably in Kreisleriana (a section of "Fantasiestucke in Callots Manier" published in 1814). Schumann used material from the eighth movement, "Schnell und spieled," for the fourth movement of his first symphony.

It takes a long time to become a good composer (2010) by Timothy Andres


I've been working on Schumann's Kreisleriana on and off for maybe the last five years, but never performed it. When Andrew asked me to start planning a solo piano concert that in some way incorporated my musical influences, my first thought was to go back to Schumann (it didn't occur to me that it also happened to be his 200th birthday year).

Living with Kreisleriana, getting to know it on micro and macro levels, led me into the idea for a new companion piece, which I'm calling It takes a long time to become a good composer. When people talk about Schumann, the common thing you hear is that he was an unparalleled miniaturist - that the two to four minute piano piece or lied was his pinnacle, and that when it came to writing sonatas and symphonies, better leave that up to Brahms. Kreisleriana, at face value, is a sequence of miniatures, but I've come to see it more as a fractal form; you 'zoom out' and start to hear larger units, you zoom out again and it resolves again, and then again and you hear the entire half hour. It works as well or better than any classical sonata.

Of particular interest to me is how he accomplished this with recurring material and alternation of musical moods. Schumann named the piece after E.T.A. Hoffman's character Johannes Kreisler, who is ostensibly embodied in this alternation of moods, but you also don't have to look very hard to see that it's a self-portrait as well. You get very intellectual, rational music juxtaposed with sturm und drang. What I'm working on in It takes a long time... is building a similar musical structure, one that uses short timescales as building blocks for something bigger, but remains intimate rather than monumental.


Clamber Music (2010) by Timothy Andres


When the violinist Wendy Sharp asked me for a new piece, I knew I wanted to write something about pedagogy. Wendy's life is devoted to teaching other people, from the tiniest of babies to the surliest of graduate students, about playing and understanding music.

The violin is the instrument with the second-best repertoire to choose from, after the piano. Despite this, young violinists (and this seems to be the same all over the world) endure years of studying what could kindly be called "pedagogical" literature. This is the music you work on before you're to be trusted with a Brahms sonata, and it was mostly written by other violinists expressly for that purpose. As a former accompanist to many of Wendy's students and an older brother to one, I've learned much of this sub-genre by proxy.

Clamber Music is a free set of variations on a theme, in reverse (each successive section bears more relation to the theme). The theme in question is an amalgamation of the sublime and the somewhat less sublime: Schubert's Moments Musicaux no. 2, and Johan Svendsen's Romance in G. I've always mentally associated the two because they share the same first four notes. The end of the piece is a kind of Gradus ad Parnassum, though also in reverse.

Here's a sampling of Timothy Andres' recent Metropolis performances: