Sir Simon Rattle is a long-standing champion of this rarely-heard work, and yet this is the first audio recording he has made of it: 'It's the great masterpiece you've never heard, and there aren't many of those now … in Schumann's life it was the most popular piece he ever wrote, it was performed endlessly. Every composer loved it. Wagner wrote how jealous he was that Schumann had done it and he'd stolen this subject that he wanted to do and how extraordinary it was.'