It was only last October that I welcomed Andreas Haefliger's Davidsbundlertanze on Sony Classical as one of the most intuitively Schumannesque to come my way from a young artist for quite a while. But already he has a rival in the British pianist, Benjamin Frith, an erstwhile Fanny Waterman pupil who hit the headlines in 1989 as winner of the Artur Rubinstein Competition. I particularly enjoyed the immediacy and urgency of his commitment—not just as the challenging Florestan (as notably in No. 9) but also in moods of Eusebian yearning—not forgetting No. 7. I was constantly reminded of the impulsive young romantic so vividly revealed in the composer's early letters and diaries. Besides vividness of characterization (helped by a very clear-cut recording), I was equally impressed by the continuity of the performance. Each section of each piece seems to grow from its forerunner just as naturally and inevitably as do the 18 pieces of the sequence as a whole. And how telling is that long pause Frith allows himself between No. 17, played as a heartfelt summation of all that has gone before, and the last piece of all—as if to bring home the truth of the composer's own verbal inscription ''Eusebius considered the following quite superfluous, but all the time great joy spoke from his eyes''.
The eight Fantasiestucke (of the same year of 1837) are no less arrestingly characterful. Maybe passion is disproportionately explosive in ''In der Nacht''—notwithstanding Schumann's admission that the music reminded him of the Hero and Leander drama. But again this young artist's imaginative fantasy and poetry, his subtle voicing of inner and under parts plus sheer keyboard delicacy and agility (as needed in ''Fabel'' and ''Traumeswirren'') made me fall in love with this music all over again. And there could scarcely be higher praise than that.'