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You have to have lived with this music for a long time before attempting to record
it. Of course, you can play the
Fantasie
at 17, but you don’t understand very much
about it. It’s only after years of experience that you can fully grasp the significance
of the first Cmajor chord, just elevenmeasures before the end of the nearly fifteen-
minute-long first movement—and the extraordinary catharsis that occurs at that
moment.
The
Fantasie
and
Kreisleriana
were recorded in October 2003 in Madrid. I have fond
memories of working with Steve Taylor, my sound engineer. Sometimes he was a
little startled by my demands concerning Schumann’s rhythms. And I’mhappy that
a recording which means a lot to me is being re-released.
Writing this reminds me of choreographer Alexander Sakharov (1886-1963), whom
I had the pleasure of knowing when I was studying at the Accademia Musicale
Chigiana in Siena.“A dancer’s movements must express the motion of his inner life,
the inner experience”—with awave of his hand, I understood exactlywhat hemeant.
Exploring music is a never-ending process.
To express the sound of one’s inner life. This
is the essence of the performer: to evoke the
beauty of sound-time.
JoaquÍn Achúcarro
July 2012
JOAQUÍNACHÚCARRO 13