“The piano is holding me back,” lamented Robert Schumann – and sensed that very different colours still lay dormant within his music. Andreas N. Tarkmann has awakened these very sounds.

The Stuttgart-based composer and arranger (*1956) is a master of fine transformation. He arranged two works by Schumann for orchestra – with astonishingly natural-sounding results.

His Waldszenen, Op. 82, originally written for piano, take on new timbres in Tarkmann’s orchestral arrangement. The watchful hunter sounds more menacing, the romantic landscape more expansive and free, and the forest bird more enchanting than ever before. The tender sketches for piano become a lively tone painting.

The second work is even bolder. Schumann's Violin Concerto in D minor – a work that Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms kept locked in a drawer for decades after the death of the composer – appears here as a clarinet concerto. Transposed a tone lower and delicately re-coloured, it can now “hope to be heard by unbiased ears”, freed from all the shadows of its turbulent history.

As a personal bonus, Tarkmann has contributed his own miniature September for clarinet and string orchestra – a captivating bonus track.

The CD was recorded with palpable enthusiasm. Belgian clarinettist Roeland Hendrikx, known for his warm tone and sensitive expression, collaborates with the renowned Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Vilmantas Kaliunas.

The CD is to be released by Coviello Classics on 4 September 2026.