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22 ROBERT SCHUMANN
But aren’t you in a sense coming back to Schumann after a period when
you mostly concentrated on Chopin and Debussy?
Yes, you’re quite right, and I really feel the need to revisit him. I had the opportunity
to perform this Schumann programme in concert at the Printemps des Arts de
Monte-Carlo in 2011. It was an idea for a disc that I had nurtured for a long time,
that I kept deep inside me. After that long Chopin-Debussy period, I said to myself
that the moment had come to record these works, because they correspond to an
‘inner necessity’, something I need to express at this stage in my career.
Howdo you analyse the evolution of your approach to Schumann’smusic?
When I started playing it, I tackled it in a very instinctive way, and even while I
was beginning to find out more about Schumann, I kept to a perception that was
at once visceral and hypersensitive. Little by little, I felt the need to know more
about the composer’s world, through reading musicological studies and also
his correspondence with Clara. All of this enabled me to get a stage further in – I
don’t dare say
understanding
him, because he was an artist whose personality was
so complex, so contradictory, so paradoxical – but in grasping the way in which
Schumann’s psyche, his torments, his inner turmoil shape his creative output. The
more I become aware of that, the more deeply his music, which touched me right
from the start, nowmoves me deeply.