My Schumannmania dates back a long way-- even before I ever heard a single note I knew I would love him, thanks to his bio, with its forbidden love, marital passion, duelling with the Philistines, and of course the inevitable descent into madness. But Schumann was an irrepressible, if agitated, soul, as is borne out by the idiosyncratic fervor of his four symphonies. The "Spring"s opening movement is one of those endlessly exhilarating experiences in art that never fails to give the spirit a kick-- without being reductively a piece of "program music," it manages to suggest the fructifying power of incipient spring-- even to tickle the skin with the physiological symptoms of "spring fever." And this is a quality spread throughout Schumann's orchestral canon, from which the immortal "Manfred Overture" and the rich "Genoveva" are also included on these discs. All are glorious, but it would be a pity not to single out the extraordinary "Adagio espressivo" of the 2nd Symphony, a movement which rivals even Mahler at his most transcendentally expressive-- and Schumann is not a child of the Wagnerian era. Nor can I fail to cite the shuddering grandeur of the fourth movement of the "Rheinish" Symphony, an interlude of intense pathos in that galloping, impish, lighthearted, always loveable work. Schumann is still a controversial composer, but perhaps I love him for all the reasons Nietzsche did not (with all respect to the sage!). His music partakes of a very youthful, tender Romanticism, imploring and transparent, and he thrives on stirring dreaminess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U68c0G12bb8