Rattle Conducts Freiburg Baroque in All-Schumann Proms — SkimNews
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- Simon Rattle conducted the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an all-Schumann Proms program at the Royal Albert Hall built around three works the reviewer labeled "problem" pieces
- The program paired the overture to Schumann's failed opera Genoveva, his Violin Concerto (ordered locked away by his executors for a century), and Symphony No. 2 (composed in the depths of depression)
- Isabelle Faust delivered only the sixth Proms performance of Schumann's Violin Concerto — a figure the reviewer contrasted with the 103rd Proms outing of Dvořák's New World Symphony the previous evening
- Rattle conducted without a podium, leaning into the first movement's "dark urgency" while shadowing Faust's subtle rubato through a finale the reviewer called "spirited yet wistful"
- The reading of Symphony No. 2 — characterized as the "Cinderella" among Schumann's four symphonies — was called crisp, with sunshine outweighing the gloomier passages
- The reviewer praised the Freiburgers' period-instrument clarity in a Royal Albert Hall acoustic described as "hardly conducive to the soft-grained tones of period ensembles," noting the ensemble never "blur[red] or smudge[d]"
Why it matters: Schumann's Violin Concerto has now been performed at the Proms only six times compared to 103 outings for Dvořák's New World Symphony, illustrating how the work's century-long suppression by Schumann's executors continues to depress its programming — even advocates like Rattle and Faust performing it on a major stage marks a small corrective to that neglect.
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