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It’s a palace with a soul of its own, the quintessence of which is perhaps to
be found in the Théâtre Byzantin, with its unsettling charm. Incidentally, a
performance of the Fauré Requiemtook place there before thework’s official
premiere. The theatre remained unusable for decades. The stage had been
bricked up. But eventually it was renovated and it reopened in 2011, shortly
before I began my complete recording. A real stroke of luck. As was gaining
the support of La Dolce Volta and meeting the sound engineer François
Eckert, who didn’t hesitate to followme in this utterly eccentric adventure.
When I started recording the set, I knew 65% of the pieces. The Marches
op.76, the
Albumblätter
op.124, the Fugues op.72, the Fughettas op.126,
seldom feature in the repertoire of pianists. Sometimes rightly so, notably
in the case of the Fugues, which are fairly abstruse. But the Fughettas are
absolutely charming! Not to mention the
Klavierstücke
op.32. The
Intermezzi
op.4 and the Impromptus on a
Theme of ClaraWieck
op.5 are as extraordinary
as they’re rarely played. In the
Impromptus
, in particular, one meets a
Schumann who is very close to Bach in polyphonic spirit. His music can
become almost theoretical, disconnected from the instrument. One might
sometimes speak of a mental implosion, or a river that floods dykes which
are never solid enough. You need an inordinate love for his music to commit
yourself to a project of this nature. I owe it to my idealistic temperament . . .
In fact, on that subject, at one stage I was tempted to go into philosophy.
I finished my studies in 1991, in the last and most tenacious years of the
Ceausescu regime. Materialism, Marxism was the only school of thought
that was tolerated. But I leaned more in the direction of Plato and George
Berkeley. Highly subversive philosophers! At that time, Subjectivism and
Idealismwere mentioned only as systems to be criticised and demolished.
DANA CIOCARLIE