A programme of three consecutive publications in the years before Schumann finally overcame the unwillingness of Friedrich Wieck to let him marry his young daughter, Clara, one of the great pianists of her age. Yet the 'light and tender' Arabeske, the last of the three, serves as a prelude to the meatier Kreisleriana and the C major Fantasie, which count among his greatest solo piano compositions. With his transcendental technique and poetic imagination, Hough is the ideal interpreter of these works, the first a suite of 'fantasy pieces' hovering between romantic rapture and despair, while he brings a masterly sense of drama, structure and freedom of expression to the Fantasie, a homage to Beethoven but also to Schumann’s muse Clara.