Before fairy tales were written down and printed in books to be read out loud, they were told orally. The composer Robert Schumann did the same with music: in his Märchenerzählungen (“Fairy Tales”) for clarinet, viola, and piano, he gives a narrator’s voice to the instruments—and to the musicians who play them—by letting them describe characters and events without the use of any words. But his music is not a reminiscence of well-known stories: it addresses our imagination and allows us to make up our own new fairy tales. In this concert, Schumann’s Romantic pieces are paired with Hommage à R. Sch. by the contemporary composer György Kurtág, inviting children and adults to go on a fanciful journey into both the past and the future.