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Stories   >   Burkard Schliessmann chats with 'Pianist' about his latest album of 'Schumann' recordings

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Burkard Schliessmann chats with 'Pianist' about his latest album of 'Schumann' recordings

Posted: May 30, 2024

As Burkard Schliessmann’s latest 3-CD album hits the shelves, the German pianist talks to Pianist about the wonders of interpreting and recording Schumann’s solo piano music. Stream Burkard's brand new recording below while you read his fascinating chat with writer John Evans.


John Evans writes…..'Goethe said, “Dreams are the feelings of the imagination.” Likewise, to me, fantasy and imagination without feeling are each hollow and dry. Music only comes to life when they are combined.’

Time spent in the company of Burkard Schliessmann, is time spent in the company of a philosopher; a pianist perpetually seeking the emotional truth behind music’s surface beauty.

In Robert Schumann: Fantasies, his latest 3-CD set released on Divine Art Records and dedicated to the composer’s piano music, Schliessmann reveals this emotional truth to us by, he says, ‘illuminating the inner germ cells of the music in all its expressiveness and explosiveness and bringing it to its limits.’ In doing so, the pianist presents some of the composer’s most familiar works, among them Kreisleriana, Fantasiestücke, the C major Fantasie and the Arabeske, as though freshly minted.

In this, Schliessmann, who has worked with those titans of the Romantic tradition Shura Cherkassky, Bruno Leonardo Gelber and Poldi Mildner (a pupil of Rachmaninov and Schnabel), is assisted by an astonishing instrument: a Steinway Model D provided by Daniel Brech and with a choice of two complete actions, one bright and brilliant, the other warm and dark.

As Schliessmann explains, ‘Exchanging the keyboards enabled me to record two completely different interpretations of some of the works including the Arabeske and ‘Des Abends’ from the Fantasiestücke Op 12. I repeat these works on the second disc. Especially for the second recording of ‘Des Abends’, which closes it, the choice of the warmer and darker hammers is akin to closing a circle by creating a kind of transition to the darkness of the Nachtstücke Op 23, with which the third disc begins and which introduces Schumann’s late pieces.’

Recording at Teldex Studios
Schliessmann also chose to record his new 3-CD set at Berlin’s renowned Teldex Studios (pictured above) with the expert assistance of producer Julian Schwenkner and engineer Jupp Wegner who each oversaw the positioning of no less than 14 microphones for a Dolby Atmos experience reproduced in SACD quality. The recording’s clarity and richness stands as testament to their work and the quality of the Steinway piano.

14 microphones were used to record the German pianist's new album

‘During the recording process I worked as if in a trance,’ explains Schliessmann. ‘I became one with the great acoustics of the Teldex studio, the unique instrument and in discussions with Julian and comparisons between various editions and original scores, I took Schumann to a special level, presenting to the listeners all his disjointedness, intricacy, vision, eccentricity and, yes, morbidity.’

Schliessmann’s ability to reveal and convey a composer’s inner world is already well recognised. A recipient of the Goethe-Prize of Frankfurt/Main, a multi-time medal winner of the Global Music Awards and the subject of two critics choice awards in the American Record Guide, Schliessmann is one of the most compelling pianists and artists of the modern era. It is surely no surprise, then, that for his latest 3-CD set, he gives us such remarkable insights into Schumann’s music.


READ THE FULL Pianist ARTICLE