Page 39 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

everything possible with that tune, then I discovered that Dohnányi had taken it even further!
But it’s fair to say that Mozart explored everything that was possible within his own musical
language – that he could get so much mileage out of such simple material still blows my mind.

I’ve known Debussy’s Children’s Corner for years, but Schumann’s Kinderszenen is something I
discovered much later in life: with the exception of ‘Träumerei’ (which is a piece I grew up with), I
only learnt it about a year ago. The opening of the piece gets me every time, because I just think
the harmony in those first four bars is so beautiful. That first movement was used in Greta
Gerwig’s 2019 film of Little Women in a way that I found really moving, and I also heard a lovely
story about Liszt discovering the piece and sending Schumann a message saying he just played
those first four bars on loop for hours. That response exactly encapsulates what I feel about it.