Schumann‘s Second Symphony began to take shape at the end of 1845, shortly after his recovery from a nervous breakdown. He made the following comment to Felix Mendelssohn: “drums and trumpets have been sounding in my mind for some time now…”
On his doctor’s advice, Schumann and his wife moved to Dresden, which was a quieter, more conservative city, and Robert recorded, “with a more benign climate,” presumably referring to its less humid weather.
There, Schumann recovered sufficiently to resume composing, although his musical colleagues regarded his work as dangerously modern. Music, in fact, was not nearly so highly prized in Dresden as literature and the visual arts.
In any event, folks who enjoyed music during the following 150 years learned to love this work.
Here is the Orpheus Symphony to play this amazing music for you:
