The young Robert Schumann undeniably had a special gift for creating great piano music and art songs but deliberately waited until he was well into his 30s before turning his hand to chamber music. Yet many of these equally great works of his later maturity have remained less familiar to audiences, and consequently those of us who attended the Sunday afternoon concert at Rockport’s Shalin Liu Performance Center owe a debt of gratitude to the musicians who gave a splendid performance of an all-Schumann program. Pianist Jeremy Denk, violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, violinist Irène Duval, and violist Blythe Teh Engstroem fashioned a winning assortment of chamber pieces in various instrumental combinations, written between 1842 and 1851.

Schumann wrote four groups of pieces called Fantasy Pieces—including two sets for solo piano and one for clarinet (often played by cellists) and piano—but he scored his Op. 73 set for piano trio. While this set consists of four “movements,” one cannot call it a piano trio in the traditional sense. Likely awed by the brilliance of the chamber works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, Schumann perhaps felt it prudent to start with something less structured. Duval, Isserlis, and Denk unfailingly conveyed the shifting moods of these pieces. Amid the yearning pathos of the opening Romanze they allowed moments of sunshine to emerge. Though the piano had the melody most of the time, the strings seemed no less important, adding color and texture. The Humoreske, however, had rustic high spirits and a simpler texture, with strings nearly always doubling the piano as the melody alternated between soprano and bass. The composer provided strong contrast in the middle section which began in the minor mode but proceeded through a surprising range of keys, and the players enjoyed a lengthy call and response section before the reprise of the opening theme. In the moving Duett Isserlis and Duval spun out their plangent melodies, sometimes separate, sometimes woven together, as Denk filled out the colorful harmonies in intimate arpeggios. The artists used rubato to especially telling effect here as the music passed from dark to light and back again. Schumann’s Finale again provides a stark contrast with its powerful martial theme replete with dotted rhythms and the melody constantly exchanged between the strings and piano. Several interludes supplied changes of mood rather than developing the opening theme (a delicious highlight: the section in delicate piano triplets, echoed by the strings). After the return of the opening theme, the tonality shifted to A major for a quite unusual rhythmic effect: the strings and piano played the same melody and harmony but with the violin and cello anticipating the piano by a half-beat. This would pose a considerable challenge to lesser musicians rehearsing it for the first time, but these accomplished players brought it off impressively. Following an extended tapering off, they brought the work to a resounding, virtuosic conclusion.

The later Piano Trio No. 3 in G Minor, Op. 110, showed Schumann’s now-confident mastery of the chamber music genre. Bell, Isserlis, and Denk demonstrated sensitivity to the rather more sophisticated textures of this work. The first movement distributed melodic interest equally among the three instruments; the artists beguiled the ear with the ascending-descending figures that recurred throughout. A very striking passage in the development, though, had violin and cello alternating pizzicatos while the piano contrasted staccato and legato writing. The faster coda appeared to be rising to a powerful ending, but the composer subverted expectations as the players brought it to a quiet conclusion in the major. The opening of the second, slow movement featured a warm, imitative dialogue between the string players with the piano eventually joining in the conversation, each performer “yielding the spotlight” naturally and seamlessly to the next. The musicians made a sudden and dramatic change of mood, though, into a faster and more forceful middle section but ultimately calmed the waters as they returned to the caressing opening music. Schumann elaborated the texture here, and the musicians responded with slightly enhanced rubato. The rich plagal cadence at the very end felt like a benediction. The composer seemed to enjoy keeping the listener guessing in the Scherzo, including frequent fortepianos and numerous accented “wrong beats.” Bell, Isserlis, and Denk pointed up the contrasts of the two trios both to the main theme and to each other, and supplied a fiery ending. The Finale looked back to tradition, utilizing a sonata rondo form with many recurrences of the main theme alternating with interludes. The opening stirred the soul, stating that theme in an emphatic and exuberant G major that again deliberately subverted the meter at times by accenting offbeats. The artists also found opportunities for humor, e.g., a florid and witty commentary in the piano’s right hand (in two separate interludes) and, later, chuckling descending triplets in the violin and cello. For those with a knowledge of the composer’s lieder, he inserted via a G-minor interlude a reference to his earlier song “The Two Grenadiers” with militaristic dotted rhythms. The brilliant ending brought the audience to their feet as this vivid and detailed performance had certainly borne out Clara Schumann’s comment on this work: “How wonderful is such an incessantly creative, powerful spirit.”

Though Schumann wrote his Three Romances, Op. 94, for oboe and piano, when Clara read through them for the first time in 1849, she partnered a violinist. One still hears them more often played on flute or violin than oboe, and various other instrumentalists have adopted them as well. Given sensitive interpreters, the Romances are equally affecting on a wide range of instruments. Duval rejoined Denk for these most introspective pieces of the afternoon.. The performers set an elegiac tone at the outset but dappled it with sunnier moments and even a bit of playfulness as well at the scherzando. The major-mode second Romance’s slightly more extroverted and faster outer sections bookended a turbulent middle section in the relative key of F sharp minor. The musicians’ reduced rubato and straightforward utterance fulfilled the composer’s specification: “Simple, heartfelt.” The final piece, back in A minor and the most mournful of them, frequently had the violin and piano in unison octaves, and Duval and Denk expertly coordinated the subtlest of tempo inflections. The middle section evoked a happy nostalgia but ultimately brought us back to the opening lament. A short coda, after seeming to be simply an extension of the mournful mood, brought a whispered comfort in the hushed last phrase in A major. The effect of the Romances on the violin, capable of portamento (unlike the oboe), is slightly closer to that of the voice; Duval used this capability sparingly but effectively.

The program’s final work, the Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47, in fact preceded the other three chronologically, but nonetheless shows Schumann determined to shake off any self-consciousness and make a bold statement in a genre new to him. Bell returned as violinist, while Engstroem and Isserlis played viola and cello, respectively. Paying only limited attention to the examples of his revered elders, the composer here gives the piano considerably more limelight than its partners as compared to the other (later) pieces: our program notes quite accurately likened the piece to a “miniature piano concerto.” But if the Quartet’s first movement, after a brief chorale-like introduction, is rather less creative than the others works we heard, it compensates with sheer joie de vivre and panache. In the lengthy passages of rapidly repeating piano chords, Denk sensibly lightened his touch to allow the string players to bring out their own melodies without strain. But Schumann unapologetically makes the pianist the star here—no doubt, because he wrote with his wife’s exceptional abilities in mind. The Scherzo (Molto vivace) had an element of perpetuum mobile to it with its delicate staccato eighth-note motion. While the piano did not yield the spotlight, it shared it here with the strings as all four players paid keen attention to their collaborators. This scherzo also had two trios, the latter of which featured yet again the composer’s fondness for deceiving the listener about the meter (trompe l’oreille, in an aural context?). In general, though, the movement shared the ethereal charm of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night Dream’s fairy music. Only in the third movement does Schumann have the piano step back and allow the strings—particularly the cello—to bask in the blissful, long-breathed melody in B flat which makes this surely one of the composer’s finest slow movements. Isserlis rendered his song with exquisite warm cantabile, handing it off to Bell who echoed it beautifully two octaves higher. Following an interlude in the exotic, plush key of G flat major, Engstroem’s viola sang the sumptuous melody in the alto range with elaborated accompaniment from Bell and Denk. At the end, Isserlis reprised it at a softer dynamic as if in reminiscence. A coda of rare beauty began with pianissimo suspensions climbing heavenward and finished with contrary-motion scales and slow trills in piano and upper strings while Isserlis’s retuned cello sustained a bottom B-flat pedal point. The Finale returned us to irrepressible joy and dazzling display, with the piano as “first among equals” once again though yielding the melodic material more often to the strings. The opening “fugue” did not endure long, yet counterpoint frequently shaped the texture, with players often imitating each other in close succession. Although several interludes took us through a dizzying array of keys, the kernel of the fugue subject continued to recur in all instrumental parts, lending unity to the whole. At the end of this imposing and difficult work, an accelerando ensured an extra-dazzling conclusion, eliciting an immediate and well-deserved standing ovation.

Geoffrey Wieting holds Bachelor’s degrees in organ and Latin from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree in collaborative piano from New England Conservatory. He is Organist of First Parish Church of Weston as well as a freelance organist, collaborative pianist and vocal coach. He sings with Coro Allegro and the Copley Singers and serves on the Board of Directors of the Old West Organ Society.