Title:	Wunderbare Leiden
Duration:	18`
Year of composition:	2010
First performance:	Ewa Kupiec and Vardan Mamikonian
	Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra / Andrey Boreyko - Düsseldorf
	Oct 8 2010, Tonhalle - Düsseldorf
Publisher:	Universal Edition

On 13 February 1854 Robert Schumann wrote in his diary: "… Wunderbare Leiden" (wonderful suffering). At this very dramatic point in the composer's life these words were of course merely a description of the state of his over-agitated mind. But somehow they also seem to sum up the very essence of the spirit of the era of Romanticism. We suffer, yes, but the suffering is a wonderful thing!

Upon receiving a request from the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf to write a commission for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann's birth I decided to bring both Robert Schumann's virtuosity of thought and Clara Schumann's virtuosity of performance into the musical reality of our own century and to try to answer the question: is the glorious era of Romanticism still able to correspond to the musical ideas of our time? Seeing the history of music as one long persistent flow of ideas I am answering this question positively. It is of course up to the audience to decide whether they share the same opinion or not.

The Fantasia literally rises up from the mysterious darkness of the beginning of Robert Schumann's 4th Symphony and his Sphinxes and already in the third minute leaps up to the triumphant joy of Clara Wieck's Theme on which young Robert composed his Impromptus op.5. Further quotations include Album for the young (perhaps as a tribute to the fist encounters with Schumann's music in my own childhood) and also a short quote from Sonata for Piano solo in F-sharp minor op. 11 (dedicated to Clara Schumann). At the very end the first phrase of Träumerei from Kinderszenen op. 15 can be heard. Everything else around these quotations is indeed a musical fiction based on the life story of two super-talented individuals very well known to a musical world.