The Venezuelan-American cellist has ‘decoded’ the Cello Concerto using the composer’s own cryptographic techniques.

Robert Schumann wrote his Cello Concerto in a period of two weeks in 1850, during his stay in Düsseldorf as the new Municipal Music Director. He and his wife Clara Wieck Schumann were received with open arms. Although Schumann had long desired a position that would provide him with his own orchestra, his move to Düsseldorf would result in a tumultuous period of anxiety and mental breakdown. The composer revised the score over two years, finally completing the piece in 1854, a couple of days before his notorious attempt to commit suicide by jumping into the Rhine.

The concerto uniquely illustrates what took place inside the composer’s mind and also demonstrates Schumann’s compositional genius. Decisions are often based on premeditated ideals, especially an affinity for including hidden messages through musical cryptography. It is easy not to question some of Schumann’s ‘out of the box’ decisions in his Cello Concerto and to simply justify them as the product of mental deterioration. For this reason, it is essential to dissect the driving force that compelled Schumann to take a different approach here and what he is trying...