The Merry Peasant

The fun and fascination with disguising oneself to be someone else for a moment has been expressed many times in music through compositions such as Un ballo in maschera, Masquerade or Carnaval. In the humorous variations on a theme of Robert Schumann, Peter Wittrich lets the Fröhliche Landmann [Happy Peasant] slip into different roles and sets out with him on a journey through time from the Baroque to the modern era.

In ten variations, Wittrich makes the Landmann familiar with the different styles and famous themes of the music epochs by treating Robert Schumann's popular theme contrapuntally in the sense of Bach, imposing Mozart's sonata form on it or letting the Landmann dance a proud polonaise with Frédéric Chopin.

Der fröhliche Landmann also becomes a jazz pianist and improvises with Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Petersen in a blues sound before he indulges, in a Grand finale, in the brilliant virtuosity of the 19th century together with Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Rachmaninov. Apart from performing the entire work, individual variations can be arranged in small cycles according to preferences in style, e.g. for Jugend musiziert, or counter-posed against the original work. A fresh and entertaining contribution to the Schumann Year 2010.