“Robert Schumann trained as a pianist until suffering from a hand injury, and later fell in love with Clara Wieck, the daughter of his teacher, who was to become one of the foremost concert pianists of her time; after overcoming her father’s opposition, they were eventually married in 1840. Not surprisingly, nearly all the works he composed up to that time, including his first 23 publications with opus numbers, were for solo piano. Much of this music makes exacting demands on the player’s technique, without necessarily sounding like virtuoso display music; all of it is full of innovative textures and sonorities, often placed within freshly invented forms and even genres...”
(from the CD linernote by Anthony Burton © 2011)