Antje Weithaas, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Dénes Várjon perform Robert Schumann's complete works for piano trio
The new album brings together Schumann’s three piano trios and the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88
Deutsche Grammophon presents Schumann’s complete works for piano trio: the Piano Trios, Opp. 63, 80 and 110, together with the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88.
The album will be released on 30 October 2026 as a 2-CD set and digitally.
“You have to be willing to embrace darkness and, with Schumann, be able to leap from heaven to hell in a tenth of a second.”
Antje Weithaas
Violinist Antje Weithaas, cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and pianist Dénes Várjon devote their new album to Robert Schumann’s complete works for piano trio. Robert Schumann: Complete Works for Piano Trio brings together the three piano trios (No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63, No. 2 in F major, Op. 80, and No. 3 in G minor, Op. 110), alongside the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88. These compositions move between intimacy and passion, lyrical tenderness and restless energy. The three internationally acclaimed musicians combine established solo careers with many years of chamber-music experience. Their shared musical language, developed in rehearsal, concert and the studio, responds to Schumann’s abrupt shifts of mood and brings the layered dialogue between the three instruments to the fore. The album was recorded over seven intensive days in February and March 2025 at the Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal in Cologne; Christoph Franke was responsible for recording, editing, mixing and mastering.
Schumann’s music can change its emotional temperature within a few bars. Bright lyrical moments turn into nervous agitation, dark energy gives way to unexpected calm, and seemingly stable forms begin to shift. For Antje Weithaas, this is precisely what makes these works both challenging and compelling. As she puts it, they demand the courage to embrace darkness and the ability, in Schumann, to leap from heaven to hell in a tenth of a second. Dénes Várjon describes the music as personal as a diary – powerful and vulnerable at once. The album is released in the year in which Antje Weithaas celebrates her 60th birthday.
The Fantasiestücke, Op. 88, occupy a special place in this overall picture. Schumann began them in December 1842 as his first work for piano trio and revised them before their publication in 1850. The four movements combine song-like and march-like characters with formal freedom and intricate dialogues. Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63, was written in 1847 and may be understood as a tribute to Mendelssohn. Canonic structures, triplets and syncopations drive the first movement, where dark energy and lyrical brightness rapidly alternate.
Piano Trio No. 2 in F major, Op. 80, was composed between 1847 and 1849 as a more melodic, sunnier companion to the first trio. Motifs from the Eichendorff song Dein Bildnis wunderselig run through the first two movements; in the lilting third movement and capricious finale, the interplay of the three voices unfolds further. Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, Op. 110, dates from 1851. Its tense, at times sombre atmosphere is driven by unrelenting rhythmic restlessness; its later movements introduce unusual harmonies that already point towards the music of the future.
Taken together, the four works reveal how Schumann repeatedly reimagined the piano trio: as a tightly woven dialogue between equal voices, a space for extreme shifts of feeling and a realm of poetic ambiguity. For the three performers, recording this repertoire was a long-held ambition. Weithaas, Hecker and Várjon approach Schumann’s unusual notation and hidden musical ideas with great precision, without smoothing away the spontaneity and sense of risk in this music. The result is a multifaceted portrait of a composer whose chamber music remains at once powerful, sensitive and disconcertingly modern.
The three artists are in demand internationally both as soloists and chamber musicians. Antje Weithaas was named Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2025 OPUS KLASSIK Awards; Antje Weithaas and Dénes Várjon received the 2024 annual prize from the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for their Beethoven recordings released by CAvi. Marie-Elisabeth Hecker won the Rostropovich Competition in 2005, while Dénes Várjon is a winner of the Géza Anda Competition and a recipient of the Kossuth Prize. In Schumann’s piano trios, they find music that brings together their different experiences while giving each instrument its own distinctive space.
The album Robert Schumann: Complete Works for Piano Trio will be released on 30 October 2026 as a 2-CD set and digitally in SD and HD. The third movement of the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88, Duett. Langsam und mit Ausdruck, will be available to stream and download from 16 October 2026.
