Several attempts have been made over the last sixty years or so to record all Robert Schumann’s works for solo piano, a fascinating cosmos full of variety that ranges from extremely virtuosic pieces for the concert hall to valuable literature for piano tuition. This attractive but difficult quest has unfortunately been marked by a lack of the necessary care, not to mention purely artistic deficiencies, so that none of the releases deserves the name “complete recording”. Since Schumann published several works (Impromptus op. 5, Davidsbündlertänze op. 6, Symphonic Studies op. 13, Concert sans Orchestre or Sonata in F Minor op. 14 and Kreisleriana op. 16) in two more or less different versions, it is not legitimate in a “complete recording” to include only one of the versions, let alone to amalgamate two of them. Moreover, works published at remote places as well as unpublished works and fragments that could easily be completed without too much speculation, have so far been taken into account only in exceptional cases.
