Forwad-Festival: Schumannliebe 3

Johanna Summer began her career with Robert Schumann. Six years ago, she released her debut album Schumann Kaleidoskop, on which she reimagined the Romantic composer through improvisation: his pieces became “standards” for spontaneous pianistic excursions somewhere between classical music and jazz. Summer now turns to Dichterliebe, while in her latenight performance she also responds to the two new compositions by Christian Jost and Jörg Widmann based on Schumann’s song cycle, which will have been heard in the preceding concert. In Dichterliebe, Summer explains, there are “many moments in which you seem to find yourself in a kind of inbetween world, between dream and reality. Will Schumann dare to make the leap into another tonality, or will he linger a moment longer in the present atmosphere? Similar tensions constantly occupy me when I improvise: can an emotion best be expressed with a particular classical vocabulary? Or has a groove just emerged that supports Schumann’s musical gesture, perhaps even enriching it with tone colors from other musical cultures?”

Performers:
Johanna Summer, piano

Program:
“Echo Dichterliebe”
Improvisations on Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op. 48

Tickets as from 4.8. | 10:00 am (CET)