A Completely Different Piece
Track twenty closed the standard edition. The deluxe edition has five more tracks, so we keep walking. These are the bonus tracks.
The facts. Bonus track twenty-one runs four minutes and five seconds. It is the second of Robert Schumann’s Three Romances, Op. 94, marked Einfach, innig: simple, heartfelt. The credit: Arr. Garrett / van der Heijden for Violin, Piano, Guitar & Orchestra, with Julien Quentin, Franck van der Heijden, Orchestra the Prezent and John Haywood conducting.
Schumann writes the three Romances in Dresden, in a few days. He dates them.
7, 11, 12 December 1849.
They are for oboe and piano. He is said to have given them to Clara as a Christmas present, calling them his “hundredth opusculum”.
In November 1850 his publisher, Simrock in Berlin, writes to him. Simrock wants the title page to say oboe, and the clarinet to appear further inside, because several instruments on a title page are “not looked upon with favour”.
Schumann answers five days later.
The first edition came out with an alternative violin part and an extra clarinet part.
Years after Robert’s death, Clara edited his complete works. Her edition names only one alternative to the oboe: the violin. Henle’s editors think that is because she played the Romances with violinists.
On Garrett’s repertoire list, Schumann already has Träumerei, which is on Iconic. He played it in Salzburg in September. Einfach, innig has one recording against it: Immortal.
It was a piece for oboe, then the violin version Clara kept, and now an arrangement for violin, piano, guitar and orchestra. By Schumann’s own reckoning, a completely different piece.
This series keeps asking what carries music past the people who made it.
Bonus track twenty-one’s answer is the people who played it. Clara played it with violinists, and the violin is the version she left in print.
Immortal — David Garrett for Deutsche Grammophon — from 9 October 2026: 20 tracks in the standard edition, 25 in the deluxe, on digital, CD and vinyl, on Deutsche Grammophon. One track at a time, we keep walking through it.
Sources & notes: the album credit as listed for the deluxe edition by Universal Music; the composition, the dates, Simrock’s letter, Schumann’s reply, the first edition and Clara’s edition from the preface to the Henle edition (HN 427); Garrett’s recordings from david-garrett.com.