Having worked his way through the sonatas of both Beethoven and Schubert for Signum, Llŷr Williams now turns his attention to Schumann’s piano music. Whether this generously filled two-disc set is intended as the first instalment of a more comprehensive survey isn’t clear. The sleeve notes give no hint either way, nor, more crucially, do they explain just why Williams has settled upon this particular selection of six works. It ranges chronologically from Schumann’s Op 2, Papillons, completed in 1831, to Faschingsschwank aus Wien Op 26, from eight years later, and includes two of his finest and best known keyboard works, the C major Fantasy Op 17 and the Op 6 cycle Davidsbündlertänze, together with the less often heard Humoreske Op 20 and the mysterious, dark Nachstücke Op 23.
Williams opens with the great Fantasy, presenting its first movement in broad, almost stately paragraphs; this is clearly intended to be a serious, intense reading, making up in intellectual weight what it might lack in impulsive excitement. Nevertheless there’s an almost spectral lightness to the scherzo, its technical challenges almost casually negotiated, and a genuine lyrical flow to the finale, even if the emotions seem to be kept at arms’ length. But even when his treatment of some of the miniatures in the larger-scale cycles doesn’t seem as spontaneous and instinctive as it could be – the opening of the Humoreske, for instance, seems far too studied – the performances are always immaculate, their working out totally lucid; it’s unquestionably thoughtful, authoritative playing.
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