Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn) are the last coherent piano works he wrote – he would attempt to drown himself only days after completing them, and would die three years after. The Op.133 is rarely performed, perhaps because of the prevailing opinion that Schumann’s increasing insanity significantly affected the quality of his musical output after 1850, or because as a work, and on a purely musical level, it is incredibly difficult to understand. In fact, this anti-reductive quality is what makes the Op.133 one of the most incredible and moving collections of pieces ever written for solo piano: what you hear here is not a mind unraveling as much as expanding into a whole new kind of life. To be clear, the Op.133 is difficult. It is wayward, with cadences that refuse to appear, deliberately opaque melodies, emotional complexities that lead only into more emotional complexities, and even the pieces in major keys contain an extremity of resignation that is hard to immediately embrace. But all this is the natural culmination of Schumann’s style, which always leant toward the fantastic and original, and for the most part actively avoided any possibility of easy characterization. In the Op.133 we see these characteristics raised to an extreme pitch – the music is so emotionally concentrated, so personal and vulnerable, that it’s almost obscene, like a betrayal of trust. No.1, Im ruhigen Tempo. A deeply moving chorale where dissonances resolve into other dissonances, and whose main tone is one of reverential stillness: the main idea is repeated 5 times with slight development, growing into a stretto at the end. The skill of the contrapuntal writing here is and in the next piece shows that even though Schumann struggled in composing this work, his musical faculties were entirely capable of producing work of great complexity. No.2, Belebt, nicht zu rasch. An extraordinary work, where the music is so wrapped in itself, so obsessively circling in search of resolution, that it’s basically impossible to understand on a first hearing. It’s rhythmically complex – the little pause that opens the piece throws you off, as do the constant syncopation and gaps in the melody – and harmonically restless, hiding its true key until very late in the piece. The counterpoint is dense, with the melody first appearing in the middle voice and the bass providing a kind of loosely muted imitation that eventually takes over – for a while, at least. The tone changes abruptly too, with staccato and semiquaver passages emerging without any preparation, pointed dotted rhythms interrupting the flow of triplets, and sforzandi scattered about which demand careful treatment. No.3, Lebhaft. This work sounds like it ought to be the most straightforward of the set, with a galloping rhythm that persists throughout the whole piece, but its surprisingly complex and shifting harmonies make this something a lot more than what you’d expect of a stereotypical “Morning-Song”. No.4, Bewegt. A work which could be called Mendelssohnian, if not for its strangely itinerant melody. The 32nd notes lend an unceasing undercurrent of restlessness which blossoms into full-blown agitation at the climax. No.5, Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo. The final piece, like the first, has a texture that is rather chorale-like, although its dotted rhythms give it a sense of movement and a more warm, homely sound. This all changes with the entrance of a gently luminous semiquaver accompaniment and a sudden shift to B maj – the piece is now ethereal, tender, anticipatory in a way that never receives fulfillment. Fittingly, a plagal cadence brings this piece (and the set) to a close, as it does the one before it.