Chamber concert 3

Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet Op. 47 is undoubtedly one of the major works of the Romantic era. It is unique how everything here is interwoven with everything else, and the entire work seems “cast in one piece”. No one knew better than Felix Mendelssohn how much painstaking work was behind the piece: he was shadowing Schumann when, after private performances, he kept improving it. Already in his first precocious works, Mendelssohn too succeeded with this line-up of instruments. In contrast, Schumann’s Quartet in C minor is hardly known; though it was not published while he was alive, he nonetheless commented that from there “a new poetic life” seemed to reveal itself to him.