The Places • The Canton of Ticino (German Tessin) is the only Swiss canton to have Italian as its officiallanguage. It is bounded on three sides by Italy and boasts spectacular mountain scenery, with waterfalls,rivers and lakes. The capital of the canton is now Bellinzona, but was earlier shared with Locarno and Lugano.A feature of the landscape lies in the great lakes that are within its territory, including part of Lago Maggiore,into which the Ticino and Maggia flow.The Music • Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony, studied in Leipzig, lived in Dresden and, in 1850moved to Düsseldorf as director of music to the city. He died in 1856, after a severe mental breakdown, fromwhich he never recovered. In 1840, in spite of the objections of her father, he had married the young pianistClara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher. It was particularly after his marriage that he turned his attentionto larger scale compositions, of which his Piano Concerto is an example, inspiredby his wife. The other work heard here, the Intermezzi, Op. 4, dates from an earlierperiod, devoted in particular to the composition of shorter piano pieces, when acareer as a pianist still seemed possible for him.
