Robert Schumann derided arrangements, but here’s a CD of his chamber works in which most of the music is presented in transcriptions he made himself for various originally-unintended instruments. The point is that the best revisions usually throw new perspectives on music you thought you knew well enough already, without in any sense dishonoring the composer’s first objectives. However, it’s regrettable that these performances by three young French artists aren’t more compelling and more sympathetic to Schumann’s idiom.
In general, these accounts are drab-sounding and almost totally lack any life-giving imaginative spark. For starters, the piano playing is weak and over-cautious, while violist Vinciane Béranger, who plays Schumann’s Phantäsiestücke, Adagio and Allegro, and the three Romances with ample sound and secure technique, woefully lacks idiomatic flair, with the Romances sounding especially torpid. Fortunately, EMI’s catalog includes a very fine and effectively played alternative. It’s a more or less identical program, the only difference being that the Adagio and Allegro is omitted, and the Op. 102 Stücke in Volkston appears in its place. The performers are Mikhail Rudy (piano), Boris Pergamenschikov (cello), Gérard Caussé (viola), and clarinetist Michel Portal. If you want superior recordings of these Schumann works, this is your best bet.
