Unimpeachably honest, Hess’s Carnaval may be less volatile or idiosyncratic than, say, Rachmaninov’s but its special sensitivity and deep affection give it classic status. Hess was indeed ‘a virtuoso in sound’ (Stephen Kovacevich, her one-time student) with a capacity to play with a simplicity and poise that accentuated rather than diminished Schumann’s free-ranging character and magic. Her opening is truly quasi maestoso (that swaggering air of assertion and importance) before bounding away truly piu moto and brillante. How good to hear ‘Papillons’ touched off with such lightness and vivacity rather than trumpeted with a more familiar insensitivity. The central section of ‘Chiarina’ is hauntingly lost in reflection and, had he heard Hess’s inwardness in Chopin, Schumann might well have changed his agitato direction. Again, Hess is a virtuoso in so many senses, more than capable of sweeping all before her in Carnaval’s exultant close.
Her ‘Vogel als Prophet’ is flexible and expressive in a style rarely encountered today; and who else has played the A flat episode in the Concerto’s first movement or spun off the central Intermezzo with such rapt engagement? Some may find her finale a trifle sober-suited, but it is intensely musical, a performance which Nalen Anthoni suggests in his excellent accompanying essay stems from a tradition which emphasised Schumann’s gentleness rather than his wildness or schizophrenia. The recordings may show their age but the transfers have come up outstandingly, allowing one to savour Hess’s past but ever- present glory to the full