Admired by Prokofiev, Ravel and Rachmaninov, a supporter of Martha Argerich, teacher to Philippe Cassard, Nikita Magaloff considerably enriched the history of piano music as he made his way through the last century. A performer of Chopin first and foremost, we find him here in a second volume of the works of Robert Schumann, this one recorded in 1960 for German radio. This recital presents the alpha and the omega of Schumann's works, with extracts from Albumblätter , Op. 124, a collection of his youthful works later brought together by Schumann, and then the Six Etudes on Caprices of Paganini, Op. 3, seen by the composer as exercises for perfecting piano technique. The Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133 are quite a different matter. These are all testamentary, visionary pieces which were almost destroyed by Clara Schumann, who saw in them only the work of a confused and disturbed mind, missing the incandescence, inspired, for the last time, by Jean-Paul and Hoffmann, two writers who had haunted Schumann throughout his life. The first of them, "Diotima", sums up the degree of Schumann's torment, rallying around the grand, mad mind of Hölderlin. © François Hudry/Qobuz