Jörg Widmann | Antoine Tamestit | Sir András Schiff

• Jörg Widmann clarinet
• Antoine Tamestit viola
• Sir András Schiff piano

Once upon a time, there were three great musicians, and they were all passionate about Robert Schumann. So Sir András Schiff, Antoine Tamestit, and Jörg Widmann decided to join together to play his music. Two late chamber works bear witness to the Romantic fascination with fairy tales, though Jörg Widmann sees the Märchenerzählungen in particular as a “disjointed, contemporary work.” Indeed, he views fairy tales as a “seismograph of humanity’s underlying primal fears and desires.” Which is why Widmann understands his own cycle Es war einmal ... (“Once upon a Time”) not as a “sentimental, nostalgic flight into the distant past,” but as “a naive and fantastical alternative concept to our real world, with all its upheavals.” György Kurtág, too, took up Schumann’s unusual scoring for a trio of clarinet, viola, and piano, paying tribute to the composer’s various alter egos and fantasy figures — from the eccentric Kapellmeister Kreisler to the wise Master Raro. The program also includes the Geistervariationen, the work Schumann was writing immediately before his suicide attempt and mental collapse: angels were said to have sung the theme to him.