Eusebius & Florestan / 1 Presented by Liszt Academy

For a long time, the passionate Florestan and the softer, more lyrical Eusebius, these two sensitive artistic characters created by Robert Schumann, were regarded on the music scene as projections of the exalted composer's own psyche, exciting but sickly manifestations… even though these two figures did not appear in the composer’s writings as delusions of a split consciousness. Far from it. They were very conscious beings: characters of fictional texts, literary figures, elements of a narrative technique running on multiple threads and selected with remarkable perception. Schumann used them — and the imaginary David alliance which they were members of along with the master Raro — to illuminate his aesthetic conceptions of Romantic art and new music without having to engage in cumbersome debate with himself in his writings. However, the composer coming from a book-trading family was, of course, not only tied to literary structures in words. He frequently used them in his compositions, too: in his songs, the musical structure often takes the form of an independent poem built from sounds, and his cyclic piano works are reminiscent of fantastic narrative strings. The two concerts by keyboard students of the Doctoral School illuminate this relationship building on delicate image associations. At the same time, the concert is also a kind of summing up of the work and research of students involved in the keyboard programme.