Schumann wrote this work in Dresden in February 1849. On the original manuscript the title is given as ‘Romance and Allegro’ but this was evidently changed before the first publication six months later. It was first played privately on 2 March 1849 by the horn player Julius Schlitterlau (a member of the Dresden Staatskapelle) with Clara Schumann at the piano. Schumann composed the Adagio and Allegro for the ‘Ventilhorn’ (valve horn) that was coming to prominence as a more versatile successor to the natural horn (with no valves). He wasn’t the first composer to do so – several years earlier, Schumann’s friend Mendelssohn had written for it in the Nocturne of his Midsummer Night’s Dream incidental music – but Schumann was enchanted with the possibilities of the instrument, and it clearly fired his imagination. The day after finishing the Adagio and Allegro he set to work on the astonishing Konzerstück for four horns and orchestra. When the Adagio and Allegro was first published in August 1849, the solo instrument was given as horn or violin or cello, a way of widening the market for this fiery and exciting work. While the cello version is often played now, the first public performance in 1850 was given on the violin (when the soloist was the confusingly-named Franz Schubert), perhaps because the piece as originally conceived for horn was thought to be too difficult: Schumann brilliantly exploits the instrument, but must have presented a formidable challenge to a player in the mid-nineteenth century.

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010