In the second installment of her recordings of Robert Schumann's piano music, Jimin Oh-Havenith juxtaposes two key works from the famous "piano decade" of 1830-1840: the Kreisleriana op. 16 from 1838 and the Humoreske op. 20, composed a year later. In these pieces, Schumann pays homage to his two most important literary models, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul. While in the Kreis-leriana, he merges suite and character piece into a fantastic collage of images, following the traces of Hoffmann's alter ego, the ingeniously eccentric Kapellmeister Kreisler, the Humoreske is designed like an essay in tones. Here, Schumann congenially implements Jean Paul's definition of humour as bridging the opposites of "Gemut" (emotion) and "Witz" (wit) that shape and tear the human apart. For every interpreter, it becomes an equally challenging and fulfilling task to shape Schumann's language, rich in contrast and held together by subtle links, into a poetic cosmos.
