Musica Viva; Alexander Rudin - Symphony No. 4, Cello Concerto in A Minor, & Fantasy in C Major for Violin and Orchestra CD

This album offers an intimate journey into Schumann’s world through three emblematic works. At its heart stands the original 1841 version of the Fourth Symphony, a rarely performed score whose transparency and almost chamber-like clarity reveal a Schumann of striking immediacy, far from the heavier later revision. The Cello Concerto and the Fantasia for violin, the latter performed here in an idiomatic and expressive transcription for cello, both belong to Schumann’s final Düsseldorf years and share an atmosphere of shifting moods and luminous shadows. Throughout the album, Alexander Rudin — appearing both as conductor and as solo cellist — joins Musica Viva in shaping a vivid, deeply human portrait of Schumann’s imagination and its fragile, radiant beauty.