Composed 1849; 8 minutes

In 1849, Robert Schumann entered one of his recurring concentrated creative periods, producing nearly 40 works of striking variety. The surge coincided with political unrest across Germany, especially in Dresden, where he and his family lived. While Richard Wagner answered the 1849 uprisings with incendiary essays that led to 12 years of Swiss exile, Schumann withdrew to a village outside the city and worked in relative seclusion. “It seems as if the outer storms compelled people to turn inward,” he wrote. “Only in my work did I find any counterforce.”

The Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70, completed in mid-February, was among the first fruits of that year. Schumann conceived it for the newly developed valve horn, whose chromatic flexibility surpassed that of the natural horn, making this one of the earliest substantial works for the instrument. On publication, however, he authorized alternatives—ad libitum violin or cello—in keeping with his aim to create poetic character pieces suitable for Hausmusik as well as the concert platform.

Schumann originally titled the opening movement Romanze. In performance on cello and piano, its long-breathed, yearning lines unfold with vocal intensity before giving way to a passionate Allegro. The Allegro’s driving principal theme grows directly from the Adagio’s expressive material, binding the two movements in a tightly argued arc. What begins as inward reflection emerges, by the close, as urgent and resolute affirmation.