Robert Schumann 1810-1856
Symphony No 1. in B flat major op. 38 Frühlingssinfonie

Tilmann Böttcher, moderator
Beethoven Orchester Bonn
Dirk Kaftan, conductor and moderator

In cooperation: Deutsche Telekom AG

For the first time, we are playing a work by Schumann in our popular Pur series. And we begin with his first symphony – a work not about spring, but about the longing for spring. The composer noted that he wrote the symphony at the end of the winter of 1841: » If I may say so, in that springtime urge that carries people away into old age and overtakes them anew every year. « What is this work, one of the first German symphonies after Beethoven, all about? It was written 14 years after the death of the »  titan «, who for decades led to a kind of » jam « for many composers who would have liked to write orchestral works. Spring could not have been composed in a more fulminant, yearning way than the 31-year-old Robert Schumann did in one of the happiest times of his chequered life …