Bärenreiter’s new urtext of Robert Schumann’s cello concerto, edited by Kate Bennett Wadsworth, is scrupulously researched and thoroughly grounded in historical performing practice ideologies.Footnote ¹ This is the third and most thorough urtext edition of this piece published in the past 30 years, a testament to the concerto’s enduring popularity in the modern cello and orchestral repertoire. The collection includes everything a cellist or conductor would expect from a thorough critical edition and more: a piano reduction, a full orchestral score, an urtext solo cello part, the editor’s performing edition of the solo part, an arrangement for string quartet and cello, an introduction in German and English, and a critical commentary with copious appendices. The string arrangement is particularly welcome, and long overdue. The idea was Schumann’s originally, though the first publisher rejected it. Its appearance will open the piece to new, more accessible performance contexts.

Wadsworth’s extensive research, the product of a three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, frames the editor’s perspective and establishes her as a leading authority on the work. The introduction includes a detailed examination of the concerto’s genesis, performance, publication, reception history, and historical ‘sound world’. The introduction is only a small portion of her scholarship; see her recent book chapter, ‘The Flexible Text: Published and Unpublished Alterations to the Schumann Cello Concerto in the Nineteenth Century’.Footnote ² Wadsworth is not only an accomplished scholar but also a professional cellist with a history of realizing her editions in performance. She also published an edition of Brahms’s Cello Sonatas in 2015 with Clive Brown and Neal Peres da Costa, followed by her recordings of these works.Footnote ³

Schumann sketched his first and only cello concerto over a week in 1850. He wrote in his diary that the work marked ‘a new way of composing’ for him, namely the shift from starting compositions as piano improvisations to composing entirely from his mind. He relied on feedback from cellists during the revision process leading up to the first publication, primarily from virtuoso performer Robert Emil Bockmühl. Schumann and Bockmühl corresponded intensely for two years on ‘technical matters’ related to the concerto, and Bockmühl was invited to prepare the clefs and fingerings for the first edition. Bockmühl’s suggestions, however, began to expand beyond technical instrumental issues into tempo and even structural formal criticism. Disagreement over the third movement eventually led to Bockmühl’s refusal to premiere the work. Breitkopf & Härtel published the piano reduction, orchestral parts, and solo cello part in 1854 (no full orchestral score until 1883), but rejected Schumann’s suggestion that they also publish an arrangement of the work for string quartet and cello. The concerto was premiered after Schumann’s death. Initially it was met with mixed reception, but this gradually changed to widespread adoration. Famous late nineteenth-century cellists Grützmacher and Davydov, released heavily marked editions.Footnote ⁴ Later generations of editions have also taken considerable liberties with the scoring, cello part, and cadenza.Footnote ⁵

Wadsworth’s edition relies primarily on the first published edition of the concerto, though other sources consulted include the composer’s first sketch from 1850, the autograph manuscript in full score from 1850–51, the pre-publication manuscript and part copies, Breitkopf’s first edition from 1854 (this included cello part, piano reduction, and orchestral parts, but no orchestral score), undated Breitkopf reprints, apparently published sometime between the first edition and the next, and the concerto in Breitkopf’s 1883 publication of Robert Schumann’s complete works, edited by Clara Schumann. Additionally, Wadsworth has consulted a variety of handwritten copies of the work from the nineteenth century, including anonymous annotated manuscripts of the full score and a violin transcription of the solo part belonging to Joseph Joachim.Footnote ⁶

Wadsworth’s editorial decisions include rudimentary changes for the modern reader, such as more conventional modern string clefs and the removal of excessive courtesy accidentals. She typically sides with the autograph in confronting inconsistencies between the first edition and the autograph, assuming copyist errors.Footnote ⁷ Her appendices include useful comparisons and commentary on her many sources. Jonathan Del Mar has recently published similar tables comparing sources for this piece in his book Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope. Del Mar compares the autograph to the first edition, second edition (1883), and Draheim’s 1995 urtext, arguing for corrections to what he sees as persistent errors in modern editions.Footnote ⁸ Comparing Wadsworth’s and Del Mar’s tables, I have found that they agree more often than not, but concerning some discrepancies between the autograph and first edition, they occasionally diverge on minor issues of slurring and dynamics. While the rationale behind every disagreement between these two scholars is unclear, Wadsworth has argued for broader acceptance of inconsistent markings between parts in her introduction. Rather than interpret such divergences as errors, Wadsworth argues that Schumann intended ‘heterogeneous slurring and nuancing in lyrical passages’ and that seemingly inconsistent accents between parts should be understood as ‘guides to distributing the weight of a melody, rather than a specifically prescribed sound’.Footnote ⁹

Wadsworth’s urtext is not the first of its kind. Joachim Draheim published a ‘source-critical, practice-oriented’ edition with Breitkopf & Härtel in 1995, which includes a piano reduction (Breitkopf Nr. 8597), orchestral score and parts (PB/OB 5283), and an annotated performance edition of the solo cello part with fingerings and bowings by Heinrich Schiff. Draheim’s work is similarly based on the first edition and cites the autograph, second edition, and Joseph Joachim’s violin arrangement. Draheim omits all of Bockmühl’s fingerings and ossia which, according to Draheim, ‘can hardly be considered as serious alternatives’.Footnote ¹⁰ More recently, in 2021 cellist Josephine Knight released an urtext edition with Edition Peters (EP 73488). Knight takes such issue with Bockmühl’s input during Schumann’s revision process that she has chosen to forgo the first edition of the concerto entirely and reproduce the composer’s 1850 autograph from before Bockmühl’s ‘interference’. ‘Bockmühl perhaps had good intentions’, Knight writes in her preface, ‘but his markings on the autograph led to future generations of performers adopting bowings and other significant changes which ultimately diluted Schumann’s original conception of the work beyond recognition’.Footnote ¹¹

In sharp contrast to previous urtext editions, Wadsworth restores Bockmühl’s work. We can see now why Draheim took issue with his ossia passages. Any cellist able to play the rest of the concerto likely would not struggle with these sections, so they sometimes seem unnecessary. Heinz von Loesch notes that these alternative passages sometimes damage recurring motivic material.Footnote ¹² Wadsworth also appears to have revived most of Bockmühl’s fingerings in her urtext,Footnote ¹³ though many modern cellists might find these suggestions disorienting. Modern fingering conventions, although varied and very personal, would still typically try to avoid situations such as high positions on low strings, outer fingers in the highest position, and changing strings in the middle of a motive. Bockmühl does not always share these values.Footnote ¹⁴ One would think that Wadsworth’s arrangement would correct and update Bockmühl’s technique, but she often follows the first edition. It is a surprising decision, especially from someone who has convinced me that Schumann intended performers to interpret his texts flexibly and exercise their creative agency!Footnote ¹⁵ Though Bockmühl’s techniques are unusual from a modern perspective, his ideas were undeniably part of the first edition. His work is important from an ideological perspective – an urtext’s allegiance to its sources and consideration of variants – and, as Wadsworth argues, invaluable from a historical performance perspective.

While I think Wadsworth should have been bolder in her arrangement of the solo cello part, I still find that her devotion to historical performance practice is justified and well-supported. Her preface thoroughly argues that Schumann’s sound world differed from our own. Drawing on evidence from Bockmühl’s method books, which were widely used in the second half of the nineteenth century, Wadsworth contends that his techniques represent performance practice in his era. While some of his decisions are unusual from a modern perspective, such as his tendency to play across strings in thumb position, Wadsworth notes that these strategies were more than abstract procedures. They often have a concrete, audible effect. For example, Wadsworth notes that frequent thumb position creates ‘subtle, flute-like colours that cellists today would not ordinarily associate with Schumann’.Footnote ¹⁶ Wadsworth’s recordings, presumably made with her performing edition of the work, attest to the validity of her interpretation.Footnote ¹⁷ There are already plenty of performing editions of Schumann’s cello concerto that will produce the modern sound we have come to expect, but this edition is stubbornly, refreshingly historical.