Barbara Ann Milewski

Bio: Barbara Ann Milewski is an academic researcher. The author has co-authored 1 publications.

Fryderyk Chopin, Chopin’s Polish Letters, trans. David Frick (Warsaw: Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 2016). 552 pp. €60,00.

Abstract: their retreats into quietude seemed to fit perfectly with Joachim’s personality. The Phantasie, one of Schumann’s final commentaries on virtuosity, incorporates the virtuosic, if uncultivated, style hongrois. Schumann blended the style hongrois with serious German music, making a statement about virtuosity and cultivation, though Stefaniak hesitates ‘to interpret the Phantasie as an assimilation narrative that restrains and Germanizes Joachim’s “Hungarian” virtuosity’. Instead, he believes both showpieces highlighted Joachim’s ‘historicism, Germanness, and seriousness’ (p. 236). While the late concertos earned Schumann a place in the canon, his earlier works are usually thought to be stronger. Ironically, they only entered the canon after his compositional style shifted in the 1840s, many of them only becoming standards in the years since his untimely death. Even though Schumann couldn’t offer definitive solutions to the problems presented by the virtuosity discourse, Stefaniak shows just how important his voice was in the conversation.