Introduction

Summary

The Introduction appraises recent trends in Schumann scholarship and reception, evaluating perceptions about Schumann’s instrumental music and the Piano Concerto’s place within them. It locates the Concerto within the critical tendency, prevalent since the early twentieth century, to style Schumann’s large-scale instrumental compositions as deficient in comparison with the piano cycles of the 1830s and the songs of 1840, evidencing the inadaptability of Schumann’s style to classical forms. Noting that the Piano Concerto has consistently evaded this criticism, I argue that the work should be understood as a landmark in the development of what John Daverio called Schumann’s ‘system of genres’: it marks the point at which Schumann’s evolving engagement with the genre comes to fruition, and makes possible his subsequent experiments with concerto form.