Phantasie, Op. 17
With passion and fantasy throughout: in the style of a legend-With energy
-Slow played by JAN SMETERLIN
(pianoforte)
Jan Smeterlin comes from Poland, the land that produced two of the greatest masters of the piano-Chopin and Paderewski. Like many other famous musicians, Mr. Smeterlin was originally intended for a legal career, and he actually entered the Vienna University where he studied Roman and Ecclesiastical Law. Later, however, he won a scholarship at the Vienna Meisterschule, where he studied piano and conducting. At the outbreak of the War he took a commission in a cavalry regiment and served on the Polish front. In addition to his great musical gifts, Mr. Smeterlin is also a master of about nine languages. A Profound Lament
Schumann's Phantasie was composed in 1836 and dedicated to Liszt. The music bears the following motto from Schlegel : ' Through all the tones in Earth's many-coloured dream there sounds one soft long-drawn note for the secret listener '. But its poetic basis is rather more explicitly described by Schumann himself in a letter to Clara Wieck , who later became his wife: ' I have finished a Phantasie in three movements, which I sketched down to the details in June, 1836. I do not think I ever wrote anyhing more impassioned than the first movement ; it is a profound lament about you.'