Schumann Daydreams portrays Robert Schumann turning to music for safe haven. Composing music was therapy for him: drafting and reworking musical ideas brought order to his thoughts. As you listen, imagine the states of mind Schumann experienced as he composed: you will relate the program most when you understand how it is ordered. This is a multimedia album: listening to the videos will help you experience the music more fully.

This music traces Schumann's psychological-musical path. The album begins with Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (1838), "reminiscences for those who have grown up" and the Arabeske, Op. 18 (1839) with its meltingly melancholic coda. Schumann was 28 when he completed this piece, written in response to Clara Wieck, his fiancée, quipping that at times he reminded her of a child. The Arabeske came one year later, while Schumann was separated from Clara by her father, Frederick Wieck, a prominent piano professor who opposed Robert as a suitor to Clara.

Next are the Waldszenen Op. 82 (1848-49), written when Schumann was 39, while he fought the transformation of long-endured "auditory hallucinations" (imaginary voices) into visions of tigers and hyenas hunting him, and demons hovering over him at night urging him to kill himself. The Waldszenen are so harmonically elegant in many places, it is hard to believe they sprang from a mind hoping against hope that music composition might affect a return to mental stability. The Waldszenen were Schumann's last substantial cycle for piano before his complete psychological breakdown.

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Then, the first volume of Fantasiestücke Op. 12 (1837) shows us Schumann at 27, writing fanciful tone poems that starkly contrast one another à la Florestan and Eusebius. Starlit tranquility in Des Abends (Of Evenings) precedes sensational, weightless gliding in Aufschwung (Soaring); gently lilting rhetoricism in Warum? (Why?) is followed by strident spontaneity in Grillen (Whims).

Schumann wrote a tender love duet, Romance in F-sharp Major Op. 28 nr. 2 (1839) when he was 29, a Christmas present to Clara (it continued to be an important piece until the end: as she lay on her deathbed, she asked her grandson to play it for her as she drew her last breaths). The Romance precedes the album's final piece. 

The Grand Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Op. 11 (1833-35) is an origin story depicting the beginnings of Schumann's mental illness. He began this work at age 22 and completed it 25: the circumstances he endured while composing it were the precursors to his first deep depressions: permanent injury to his right hand that ruined his pianistic career, the deaths of two family members, and first suicide attempt. But nothing traumatized him more than falling in love with Clara Wieck, whose father promptly exiled her to distant cities for concert tours, ensuring Robert would never see her as he suffered his most difficult emotional traumas. 

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Schumann published the Sonata under the pseudonyms Florestan and Eusebius: Schumann's two alter egos (Florestan impetuously dramatic, Eusebius poetically melancholic, these alter egos appear into his musical landscape ubiquitously). Clara uniquely understood Robert's personality and could interpret the musical codes in the Sonata, especially the Aria, "a solitary outcry" from Robert to her and a sign of his devotion. Ensconced in the Sonata's turbulence are treasures of the piano literature: the first movement's A-major chorale, the heartbreakingly beautiful second movement (Aria), a charmingly odd Scherzo with a pompous Polonaise and capricious Recitativo, and in the Finale, harmonically sumptuous colours are the heartbeat between a defiant orchestral refrain before a vertiginous octave-fuelled coda brings about a triumphant conclusion.