Leader, ALFRED CAVE
Conducted by LESLIE HEWARD
Schumann's C major Symphony is really his Third Symphony. It was wrongly numbered because the Second Symphony was published last of all. The composer's biographer Wasie lewsky , tells us that Schumann said of this work : ' I sketched it when I was in a condition of great physical suffering ; I may say it was, as it were, the resistance of the spirit which has here visibly influenced me. I sought to contend with my bodily state. The first movement is full of this contest, and is in its character very freakish and contumacious.'
The introduction to the first movement brings in several of the themes to be used later in the work. The opening theme on the brass is a kind of ' motto ' that will be heard many times in the subsequent movements.