When Heinz Holliger says ‘Robert Schumann is the composer who has almost always been at the true centre of my thoughts’, it’s fair enough to wonder how his love for this quintessential Romantic spirit stacks up against his impeccable Modernist credentials – this onetime student of Pierre Boulez, who in his parallel career as an oboist, has commissioned music from Stockhausen, Berio, Carter, Lutoslawski and Messiaen.

But perhaps Holliger, who is in London next week for a series of concerts and talks at Kings Place – an event they’re calling Heinz Holliger: In Profile – was put on this earth to remind us that terms like ‘Romantic’ and ‘Modernist’ might be labels of convenience, attempts to neatly file away nuances of history that are actually far more complex.

‘Souvenirs and Fairytales’, the opening concert (March 23), cracks into how Schumann’s bountiful fantasy life became a catalyst for Holliger’s music and ideas; ‘Darkness and Infinity’ (March 24) turns towards 'darkness, mystery and coded complexity' and includes Holliger’s Romancendres, a lament for Schumann manuscripts destroyed by Clara; ‘Fantasies and Journeys’ (March 25) is about Schumann’s relationship with Brahms, and Holliger’s debt to his teacher Sándor Veress; ‘Childhood and Encryptions’ (March 26) interweaves Schumann’s Album for the Young around Holliger’s Duöli and Präludium, Arioso and Passacaglia and climaxes with a performance of Berg’s Chamber Concerto, the personal and mathematical mysteries of which Holliger will decode during a pre-concert talk.

German writer Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, writing in the booklet notes to Alexander Lonquich’s new ECM recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana, which is paired with Holliger’s Schumann-derived Partita, speculates: ‘Holliger’s invocation of Schumann suggests that he takes his bearings less on safe and polished mastery than on an affinity for the fractured and insecure – another aspect of “romanticism”.’ Which seems spot on to me: Holliger’s imagination sees Schumann’s jittery, unstable harmonies and the fresh terrain opened up by Schoenberg’s atonality as part of the same impulse. It’s the seismic shocks that make headlines, but music history is also cyclic. At Kings Place, expect to hear evolution, not revolution.

Heinz Holliger: in Profile is at Kings Place, London, March 23-26

Philip Clark