Fantasie in C major, Op. 17

Schumann's grandest work for solo piano, written in 1836 during his enforced separation from Clara. The first movement carries an epigraph from Schlegel — 'through all the sounds there sounds one soft note for the one who listens in secret' — and Schumann told Clara that the note was her. Against every sonata convention, the finale is a long, quiet adagio. The leaping coda of the second movement is one of the most perilous passages in the Romantic piano literature.

• Sviatoslav Richter

  Reference

  EMI / Warner · 1961

  Richter takes the notorious leaps at the end of the second movement more dangerously than anyone, which pushes the work's centre of gravity into the stillness of the finale.

• Maurizio Pollini

  Modern

  Deutsche Grammophon · 1973

  The opposite approach: structure first, emotion emerging from it. Best heard before Richter, not after.