A Recital by Steven Osborne, piano

Robert Schumann

Arabeske in C major, op. 18 | Kinderszenen, op. 15

Claude Debussy

Selections from Children’s Corner | Deux arabesques

More than a century and a half after the fact, it is easy to discount how essentially radical Robert Schumann’s early piano music seemed to both performers and audiences in the 1830s and ’40s. Many of his pieces, like Carnaval or Kreisleriana, consisted of a string of miniatures of wildly varying styles and disconcertingly sudden changes of mood. These pieces often involved a literary program indicated by means of quotations that many listeners did not even comprehend, or labeled with names like Florestan and Eusebius that represented aspects of Schumann’s own personality. Even Liszt was hesitant to perform Kreisleriana, which Schumann had dedicated to him, because it was “too difficult for the public to digest.”

When she was still his fiancée, Clara Wieck regularly tried to persuade Schumann to write something in a more accessible style. She hoped that her father, who objected to their planned marriage, might realize that he could write something that would sell well enough to provide a stable income. Of course, she also hoped that she could perform his music in public concerts that would arouse enthusiasm for the composer and his work. In a letter of April 4, 1839, she implored him to try “just once” to write a piece that audiences could understand, “something brilliant, completely understandable, and without inscriptions—a completely coherent piece not too long and not too short. I’d so much like to have something of yours to play that’s specifically intended for the public. Obviously a genius will find this degrading, but politics demands it every now and then.”

Even as Clara wrote this letter, Robert was beginning to write pieces that were less bizarre, less idiosyncratic. One of these is his Arabeske (often published as Arabesque), which he composed between October 1838 and January 1839. The word arabesque refers to Islamic art (as the presence of the root “Arab” suggests), especially decorative linear patterns made of scrolling foliage. Schumann’s work does not exactly intertwine decorative patterns, but it does emphasize the linearity of its melodies over constant chordal arpeggios in its principal section.

The Arabeske might be the same work that Schumann referred to as a “rondelette” in a letter to Clara; no work with that title is known, but the Arabeske is cast in the shape of a “little rondo”: ABACA, with a coda. The A section shares an opening figure with the C section, which provides contrast by its minor mode and more assertive richness of sonority. The B section represents the dreamy, poetic, “Eusebius” side of Schumann, and it becomes the basis for the evocative coda.

At the end of the nineteenth century, as French music was just beginning to assert itself after 150 years of Austro-German domination, Claude Debussy developed a novel and thoroughly French style of keyboard composition. In contrast to Germanic music of the day, Debussy’s miniatures favored timbre and texture over form and structure. His harmonies were often non-functional, employing parallel chords, unresolved dissonances, and free modulation. Debussy’s ideal was, after all, “music so free in form that it seems improvised,” as if it were “torn from a sketchbook.” It was a new language for music, one that would ensure the composer’s lasting popularity and reputation.

Debussy composed his Children’s Corner suite in 1908 as a reflection of his delight in watching his five-year-old daughter, nicknamed Chouchou. He may have conceived the idea of writing a “children’s piece” while working on an admiring critique of Mussorgsky’s song cycle The Nursery. Debussy titled the work—and the individual movements—in his sometimes-quirky English, possibly as a gesture toward Chouchou’s English governess. The music was composed over a period of years. (The Serenade of the Doll had been published separately two years earlier.) He assembled it into a suite of pieces that go far beyond music to be played by children; rather, they reflect an adult’s sophisticated view of childhood, including certain private musical jokes that would surely go over that child’s head.

Of the six movements in the suite, the first and last are omitted here. The remaining four will appear in the following order:

The Snow is Dancing is a toccata for alternating hands with subtle rhythms, particularly in the middle section, that scarcely rises above the dynamic of piano.

Jimbo’s Lullaby refers to the child’s toy velvet elephant (Debussy insisted on the spelling “Jimbo” rather than “Jumbo”) and quotes from a lullaby, “Do, do, l’enfant do.”

The Little Shepherd grows from unaccompanied melodic phrases such as might be sounded on a reed pipe, both pensive and joyous, while the harmony grows more and more complex throughout.

Serenade of the Doll is “sung” to the imagined accompaniment of a high-pitched instrument like a toy guitar; its main section suggests the effect of the Balinese gamelan music that intrigued Debussy, while the middle section offers a strong contrast with a pensive and nostalgic melody.

Even in his earliest works, Debussy’s inclination towards novel effects and an emergent musical “impressionism” were readily evident. His two Arabesques for piano, composed between 1888 and 1891, manifest some of the inventive traits for which he would later become renowned. For Debussy, the connotations of an arabesque were organic; he thought of it as a line beautifully curved by the movements of nature. So while these early keyboard arabesques have little directly to do with Muslim exoticism, they demonstrate Debussy’s fascination with the spontaneously undulating line in music.

That is especially true in the first Arabesque in E major. The opening and closing passages, while evoking rich harmonies, are formed simply by the interaction of two flowing lines that downplay the rigid symmetry of the bar-line and trail off organically in delicate tendrils. In the middle sections, the harmonies become more chordal, the texture filling out with richer keyboard voicings.

The spritely and dancelike second Arabesque in G major explores the ornamental aspect of an arabesque more than its linear qualities. The same triplet flourish colors the melodic lines throughout the work, drawing attention to the delicacy of the fine details.

Along with the Arabeske at the beginning of this program, Robert Schumann’s piano suite Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) stands among the composer’s best-known work; along with his Lieder, piano music was and still is at the center of the German composer’s fame.

The intimacy of solo piano music, especially the miniatures about children heard here, holds its own in a concert program that runs from Romanticism to Impressionism to Jazz to Minimalism. The musicologist David Ferris has pointed out the unique value these small forms held in the shared life of Robert Schumann and his partner, the virtuoso pianist and composer Clara Wieck. Wieck’s virtuoso career was gathering real steam in the late 1830s, during which period Robert was attempting to prevail upon her father, his piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, to consent to their marriage. The young Wieck had met with much success especially in Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen, where she supplemented her public concertizing of Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven with private performances of Robert’s music, primarily Kinderszenen, Carnaval, and other solo piano works. These private audiences typically consisted of connoisseurs or fellow musicians in an archetypal salon setting. This type of audience was perfectly aligned with Schumann’s goals as the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music): he and his colleagues saw private music performances as desirable substitutes for public concerts. Because such performances had no need to make concessions to public opinion, they were an ideal environment for Schumann’s more intimate and adventurous genres. The choice of Schumann’s keyboard works on tonight’s recital thus welcomes us into this atmosphere of collegial and intimate innovation.

Kinderszenen features thirteen pieces, each one only lasting about a minute. Carrying descriptive titles like Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands and People), Träumerei (Reverie), or Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the Hobbyhorse), the selections each dwell in a singular mood, whether that is imagination-fueled wonder, mystified contentment, or rollicking joy.

Robert wrote to Clara while she was on a performance tour in March of 1838 that he had composed some short pieces about childhood, but from an adult perspective. “Whether or not in response to some words you once wrote saying I sometimes seemed to you like a child, I took flight and amused myself with working out thirty droll little pieces, twelve of which I have selected and christened Scenes from Childhood [Kinderszenen]. You will like them, though you will have to forget you are a virtuoso for the time being. . . . They are descriptive enough, you see, and as easy as winking.”

So far, so straightforward. But after selecting the twelve pieces that would become his Opus 15 (the others would later find their way into Opuses 99 and 124), he added a sort of sui generis thirteenth, titled Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks). The philosopher and theorist Theodor Adorno has suggested that Der Dichter spricht “foreshadows expressionism in music,” spotlighting Schumann’s theatrical act of stepping out from behind the childlike masks of these small character pieces to speak directly and with mature virtuosity, revealing to Clara his childlike emotional intensity.

Notes for Schumann’s Arabeske and Debussy’s Children’s Corner: © Steven Ledbetter; for

Debussy’s Arabesques: © Luke Howard; for Schumann’s Kinderszenen: © Joseph Pfender.

Marion Bauer, Meredith Monk, Frederic Rzewski, Steven Osborne,

Keith Jarrett, George Gershwin, and James Hanley

Various works

For pianist Steven Osborne, programming a recital is a creative process rather than an exact science. The art of programming becomes both an offering to the audience and a personal journey. He notes:

I have an instinct about the balance, the journey through the program and what emotions I want to feel before or after a particular piece. It’s like putting together a jigsaw. Key relationships have some subliminal impact, so I try not to make those too jarring, and I like to have intellectual links such as symmetry or reverse symmetry. I created one program where the final note of each piece was the first note of the next. . . . I’m not sure it means much to the audience, but it gives me pleasure!

Osborne’s thoughtful approach to programming results in eclectic pairings, with music that moves easily between centuries, styles, and genres. The second half of tonight’s program explores the stylistic reaches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Osborne focuses on the American miniature, taking on nature-inspired classical meditations, emotive Jazz ballads, and his own improvisations. The program lets the audience listen in on an intimate but thrilling musical conversation, one that pushes against the expectations of how a classical piano recital is built.

The journey begins with Marion Bauer’s “White Birches,” the first movement from her piano suite From the New Hampshire Woods, Opus 12 (1923). The piece was inspired by the natural surroundings at the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ residency in New Hampshire where the composer often worked. The miniature, with its rich, restless textures, conjures the ever-changing New England landscape that Bauer observed at the residency.

Evoking another facet of American life, Meredith Monk’s 1981 work Railroad (Travel Song) captures the rhythms and feelings of train travel. Of her piano pieces, Monk writes:

Directness, purity, asymmetry and above all transparency have always been important. . . .The surface of the music is seemingly simple, but the intricacy of detail and the combination of restraint and expressivity challenge the performer. Every gesture is exposed and clear.

The avant-garde composer cites Jazz pianist Theolonius Monk as inspiration, and also studied the miniatures of Federico Mompou, Erik Satie, and Béla Bartók. In this brief work, Monk channels the rhythmic energy and efficient expressivity of her musical heroes, bringing to sonic life both the monotony and excitement of travel.

After conjuring the sights and sounds of the railroad, Osborne’s program continues off the beaten track with another machinery-inspired work. The pianist first encountered Frederic Rzewski’s 1979 piece Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (from Four North American Ballads for Piano) in college. He describes the work, with its mix of contemporary dissonances and Blues melodies, as “an anarchic, experimental piece.” Rzewski’s ferocious music is filled with tone clusters—chords played with the performers’ forearms and fists—which evoke the machinery of a cotton mill. Osborne also draws the listener’s attention to the “ghostly blues in the middle, which gets flattened by the machinery towards the end,” underlining the “extroradinary concept” behind Rzewski’s piece.

Musicians spanning centuries and styles have embraced improvisation as a central component of creative practice. The remainder of the program celebrates the joy and expressivity of improvisation, as Osborne performs his own improvisation before offering his interpretations of some of his favorite Jazz improvisers. “The first time I improvised,” Osborne recalls, “it was thrilling. I was influenced by Keith Jarrett and his unplanned concerts. What happens when you sit down in front of an audience with a completely blank page and you have to play something? I found that something actually happened, and it felt like it was mine—honest and beautiful in its way.”

Can a musician perform another artist’s improvisation? The practice of transcribing improvisations has always played an important role in Jazz students’ education: it trains the ear and allows students to observe how their heroes structure solos and sonorities. Osborne’s transcriptions also allow him to blur the boundaries between composition, improvisation, and performance, as he re-interprets the work of some of the greatest Jazz artists on the concert stage.

Osborne admits that in college he was “obsessed with Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. I listened to a lot of jazz and mucked around with the style.” Although the pianist calls himself more of a “dilettante” than a Jazz pianist, he is fascinated by subtle differences between classical and Jazz phrasing:

With classical music you’re always finessing rhythm. If you play a phrase metronomically, you sound like a computer. Jazz is never mechanical, but there’s an endless stability in the underlying beat that classical pieces don’t have. There may be sections of classical pieces that are flexible, and at the end of the section there will be a breath, whereas jazz never has that breath. For classical players, it’s deeply ingrained that we take a tiny bit of time after phrases – but if you do that in jazz, you lose the swing.

Keith Jarrett—like Osborne—blurred the lines between musical genres by releasing concert-length improvisations, Jazz standards, original compositions, and classical works. Jarrett’s “My Song” first appeared on his 1978 album, also titled My Song. The ballad is lyrical and contemplative, with a sense of simplicity that belies great harmonic nuance and rhythmic richness.

Osborne’s transcription takes Bill Evans’s performance of “I Loves You Porgy” from the classical stage to the Jazz bar and back. The song originated in George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, whose ground-breaking premiere featured an all-Black cast. I Loves You Porgy is an outpouring of love between the opera’s titular characters. Evans’s serenely expressive Jazz rendering (and Osborne’s interpretation thereof) point to the ballad’s enduring appeal.

The program leaves ballads, but not longing, behind with the recital’s final work, a performance of “Indiana” as transcribed by Osborne from Oscar Peterson’s performance of the song originally written in 1917 by James F. Hanley and Ballard MacDonald. The romanticized vision of the midwestern state dances along with Peterson’s signature swing and virtuosic velocity, leaving us with a final, exuberant slice of American life.

With that Osborne’s jigsaw is complete: a reimagination of the American musical landscape, and a reminder that every performance can be an act of discovery.

— © Kamilla Arku

Steven Osborne’s musical insight and integrity underpin idiomatic interpretations of varied repertoire that have won him fans around the world. The extent of his range is demonstrated by his thirty-five recordings for Hyperion, which have earned numerous awards. He was made OBE for his services to music in the Queen’s New Year Honors in 2022. A thoughtful and curious musician, he has served as artist-in-residence at Wigmore Hall and Bath International Music Festival, and is often invited to curate festivals. Osborne is a regular visitor to the BBC Proms, having performed there fifteen times. He has a lifelong interest in jazz and often improvises in concerts, and also performs his own transcriptions as encores. He brings this spontaneity and freedom to all his interpretations. This season he tours the U.S. with a recital program that includes his own jazz transcriptions and improvisations. Osborne has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Wiener Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall, and the Kennedy Center, and is a regular guest at both Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall. He has been a Hyperion recording artist since 1998, with releases spanning Beethoven, Schubert, Ravel, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb, and Feldman. Osborne was born in Scotland and studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and the Royal Northern College of Music. He is visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014