The piano is becoming too confining for me,” lamented Robert Schumann – sensing that quite different sounds still lay dormant in his music. Andreas N. Tarkmann has now brought precisely these sounds to life.

The composer and arranger (*1956), who now lives in Stuttgart, is a master of subtle transformation. For his new CD, he has arranged two Schumann works for chamber orchestra – with astonishingly natural results.
The Forest Scenes, Op. 82, originally written for piano, shine in new colours in Tarkmann’s orchestral version: the lurking hunter sounds more menacing, the romantic landscape more expansive and free, the forest bird more beguiling than ever before. Delicate piano sketches are transformed into a vivid soundscape.

The second step is even bolder: Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D minor – a work that Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms kept locked away in a drawer for decades after the composer’s death – is presented here as a clarinet concerto. Transposed down a tone and delicately re-coloured, it can now ‘hope to be heard by unbiased ears’, freed from all the shadows of its turbulent history.
As a personal encore, Tarkmann contributes his own miniature, *September*, for clarinet and string orchestra – an enchanting bonus track.

The CD was recorded with palpable enthusiasm: the Belgian clarinettist Roeland Hendrikx, known for his warm tone and subtle expression, performs alongside the renowned Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Vilmantas Kaliunas.