It is always a pleasure to welcome Leon McCawley back to Luton Music. We have enjoyed remarkable recitals from him over the last five years and this programme of Romantic piano music promises to be another such memorable occasion.

Although Schumann’s 2nd Piano Sonata is essentially musical in its discourse, it does have a resonance with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music in that the slow movement is based on a setting that Schumann had made of a poem by Justinus Kerner – Im Herbste.

Be off with you, O sun,
Hurry away from here!
So that she might be warmed
By only me!

Wither, flowers, O wither!
Hush now, little birds!
That only I might sing to her
And bloom in doing so.

 Woven into the poetically inspired melodic invention of this movement (and indeed in many other places in the work) is the composer’s motto theme for his beloved wife Clara. She was his greatest muse and this is another of his works that bears testimony to his unswerving devotion to her.

Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)