FAIRY TALES WITHOUT WORDS

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.