Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1849
- Duration
- 16'45''
- Publisher
- G. Henle Verlag
Purchase or download
About this piece
Schumann wrote the five pieces in Dresden in April 1849, noting '4 pieces for cello' on 15 April and the fifth two days later. Clara Schumann wrote in her diary that they 'absolutely beguiled me with their freshness and originality.' The dedicatee, the Leipzig Gewandhaus cellist Johann Andreas Grabau, first played them for an audience with Clara at Schumann's 40th-birthday party on 8 June 1850. The traditional date for the first public performance is 6 December 1859, when Friedrich Grützmacher and Clara played them at the Gewandhaus. Carl Luckhardt of Kassel published the set in 1851, with an alternative violin part. Reviewing it in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Emanuel Klitzsch wrote that the pieces need 'not a virtuoso as much as a savvy performer who can make his instrument speak.' They are original tunes in folk style rather than folk-song settings, full of uneven phrases and offbeat accents, and only the first has a title, 'Vanitas vanitatum.' Recordings include Pablo Casals, Mstislav Rostropovich, Steven Isserlis, and Gautier Capuçon with Martha Argerich. Henle's Urtext (HN 910) and the first edition (free on IMSLP) are the main sources.
Technical overview
Five pieces, about 16-17 minutes: I. Vanitas vanitatum. Mit Humor (A minor); II. Langsam (F major); III. Nicht schnell, mit viel Ton zu spielen (A minor); IV. Nicht zu rasch (D major); V. Stark und markiert (A minor). Calls for rhythmic bite and irregular, syncopated phrasing in Nos. 1 and 5 (Henle: 'a striking show of power and forcefulness' in Nos. 4 and 5), a big sustained tone in No. 3 ('mit viel Ton zu spielen'), and lyrical shaping of the seven-bar phrases in No. 2.