Celebrated Portuguese pianist Artur Pizarro performs an exquisite selection of pieces by Robert Schumann charting the ‘Lebensreise’ (life’s journey) of both the composer and the artist.

The music of Robert Schumann has been a constant in Artur Pizarro’s life, but he has refrained from recording the Bunte Blätter (‘Colourful Leaves’) for over 30 years, choosing to wait until experience and musical maturity could be brought to bear on these wonderful miniatures.

The Bunte Blätter, encompassing works composed between about 1836 and 1849, is unique in Schumann’s output: under the umbrella of the collection as a whole there are two, smaller collections plus six individual pieces, each a finely-cut gem that sparkles in the hands of Artur Pizarro. Schumann’s Sonata no.1 in F sharp minor, op.11, is a work of precocious coherence in which innovations abound, and the programme also includes the Allegro, op.8, a powerful movement that unfolds in the manner of a fantasia.