Schumann's Papillons

I will never forget summer of 2000, my horrific performing experience at a masterclass in Italy. It was mid-July in Southern Italy, blazing hot with no air conditioning anywhere in the city (except in the fancy hotels and restaurants, but certainly not in the practice rooms or concert halls). A certain hot-shot pianist from Italy, whom we will refer to as Maestro X, tore apart every participants' performances, including my Prokofiev 3rd Sonata. The most harsh one was a freshman from Peabody performing Schumann's Papillons. Maestro X looked at the director of the program and said that he had no desire to instruct this student how to play better because it was simply horrible. He went on and asked if the student knows how to dance, because that is what the piece needs. The student shook his head. Maestro X's last comment before the poor kid was booted off was: "learn how to dance".

Though Maestro X's approach towards the student was extremely rude and pompous, I do agree with his comment. I do believe that performing this piece does require some imagination of the picturesque quality of the masquerade as well as the dances that are taken place at the ball. As I listen to this wonderful work, I realized how much of Schumann's musical elements and ideas are developed from the very beginning: short character pieces with contrasting mood and characters (within each piece and between pieces), uses of short motives and dotted rhythms, sudden changes of characters using piano, double bar lines, key change, and repeats. Oh, and did I mention the repeats? Schumann loves to repeat: repeating lines, repeating sections, repeating the entire piece. Sometimes only repeating the first A section, but not the B section; sometimes repeating just the second A section. Sometimes, he repeats all of them! Sometimes he writes in first ending and second ending, because he can't just repeat things all the time... that would be redundant. Of course, some performers choose not too take all the repeats, which I think it is a wise choice. Don't get me wrong, I love Schumann, but having all these repeats is taking things a bit too far.

I do hope that the Peabody Freshman had looked beyond Maestro X's cruelty and contemplated on his unkind but rightful comment about Schumann's Papillons and "danced away" as he performed this piece from that day on.