Performed by Bede Hanley (oboe) and Stephen De Pledge (piano) at the CMNZ concert, 'Fantasy & Romance', Auckland Concert Chamber, 3 August 2021.
"In 1849 when Robert Schumann was composing his Three Romances, he merged their free lyricism with another aesthetic that preoccupied the German Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the literary fragment, characterised in Friedrich Schlegel's Athenaeumsfragment as 'a small work of art, that has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog'.
"In Schumann's hands, the musical fragment provides a moment of crystallized enigmatic reverie, which ends still leaving its listener in a a stage of anticipation."
~ from the Chamber Music New Zealand programme notes.
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Concert Chamber, 3 August 2021
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Adrian Hollay