One of Schumann's most curious yet infectious works, the Faschingsschwank aus Wien (perhaps best expressed as a ‘Carnival-Jape from Vienna’) is a ‘sonata-in-disguise’ but one cast in a high-spirited rather than a profound vein. Schumann was a mercurial and often contradictory character: chameleon-like in his ability to affect different personalities and here he reveals an unbuttoned sense of joie de vivre quite at odds with his inward anguish. His sense of humour here comes vividly to life with a mischievous quotation of La Marseillaise towards the end of the first movement. This symbol of Revolutionary France was banned in Vienna and Schumann obviously realised that his nice new Viennese publisher Pietro Mechetti could get into trouble when he eventually published the work in 1841. But by then Schumann had long left Vienna and returned to Leipzig.

from notes by Geraint Lewis © 2024