Portrait of Robert Schumann in his mature years, reflecting the inner tension that marked his life. Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, in Zwickau , a small provincial town in northern Germany. He grew up in a household shaped by books, ideas, and quiet intellectual ambition. His father, a bookseller, believed deeply in the formative power of culture, and young Robert spent countless hours immersed in classical literature. From an early age, he dreamed not of music alone, but of writing—of becoming a storyteller. Even as a child, Schumann invented imaginary characters and carried on inner dialogues with them. What appeared at first as youthful imagination gradually revealed itself as something deeper: a need for inner refuge , a way of managing emotional tension long before he could articulate it. The seeds of a divided inner world were already present. Zwickau, the small German town where Schumann was born and spent his early years. The year 1826 marked a decisive rupture. The...
Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti, whose groundbreaking keyboard sonatas transformed the expressive possibilities of the harpsichord. To fully realize his extraordinary gifts, Domenico Scarlatti had to free himself from paternal authority and emigrate. Only through distance and independence was his creative imagination able to unfold—ultimately to the great benefit of music itself. In his search for the new, Scarlatti focused almost exclusively on keyboard composition, particularly for the harpsichord, an instrument that was rapidly evolving and gaining an increasingly central place in the musical life of his time. The 555 keyboard sonatas that emerged from his creative mind are far more than technical studies or mere esercizi , as he modestly called them. Rather, they form an imaginative and remarkably varied collection of short works that introduce bold new playing techniques and anticipate the mature tripartite sonata form. These compositions reveal an exceptional reservoir of harm...