Tech buffs will be familiar with overclocking. You fine-tune a processor so that it runs at a higher than intended speed. In theory you’ll get more out of your computer, more quickly, but you have to know what you’re doing. Hélène Grimaud’s mind runs like an overclocked processor, or so it seemed to me over a Zoom call from Munich one day in May.
For the avoidance of doubt, there is nothing mechanical or calculating about her conversation, any more than there is about her playing. To switch to an automotive analogy, she goes at full throttle. In this regard there is a particular meeting of minds with Robert Schumann, who never spent four months on a piece when he could write it in four days.
That’s how long Schumann claimed it took him to compose Kreisleriana, and even if the truth is more prosaic – afirst draft poured out of him in April 1838, revised and polished later that year – the finished article magnificently embodies the composer’s restless and impulsive spirit, from its tumultuous opening bars onwards.
Inside Schumann’s head
Grimaud discovered Schumann at an earlyand Kreisleriana, but her new DG recording brings with it the wisdom of experience.
