Gerard Willems | Carnaval
March 31, 2022, Australian Digital Concert Hall
Carnaval is a very early piano piece by Schumann but to my mind transcends anything he wrote subsequently. Carnaval is a pre-Lent festival in Germany in which there are masked balls featuring characters like Pantalon and Columbine, and Schumann incorporates these figures into sections adding composers such as Paganini and Chopin and the two sides of his own character, Eusebius – reflective and artistic and Florestan – angry and impetuous.
In addition, there are two series of notes (A, E flat C, B) depicting ‘Asch’, the home town of his fiancée and E flat, C, B, A, a code for the composer’s own name. I myself am not a fan of musical cryptograms but if they lead to such a superb series of musical episodes, I may become converted.
The basis for the beginning of the work can be found in the composer’s variations on Schubert’s dinner waltzes but this tempestuous introduction resolves into sections as above, each somewhat related to the next. In this concert Gerard Willems adds the rarely played movement Sphinxes before Papillons where the notes A, E flat, C, B are written in breves without further instructions (no key, tempo, or dynamic indications). Interestingly, both of the pianists Arrau and Rubinstein omit this difficult to interpret short section while Rachmaninov includes it.
Speaking of Arthur Rubinstein, he is quoted as saying, “If you want to hear a recital of mine without mistakes you’ve come to the wrong concert” and the same would apply to Willems’ rendition, displaying in full the feelings of the composer with its subtle changes of mood and tempo. I enjoyed every second of it.
