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As an assistant professor of Piano and Music Theory, Dr. Louie Hehman helps Bellarmine Music majors prepare for recitals in their junior and senior years. But this weekend, Hehman himself will be under the lights of the Cralle Theater stage.

 

On Sunday at 3 p.m., he will perform a solo piano recital featuring Carnaval, the famously difficult, 28-minute masterwork of Robert Schumann. Composed between 1834 and 1835, the work for solo piano has 21 movements that collectively cover the full range of human emotion.

 

“Each movement is a vignette depicting a character at an imaginary masked ball around the time of Carnaval, or what we in America might call Mardi Gras,” Hehman said. “Some of these vignettes represent aspects of Schumann's own personality, of which there were several—today, it is believed that he may have had undiagnosed schizophrenia. Other movements are musical portraits of his friends and acquaintances. 

 

“The overall experience is one of quick contrasts that manage to fit together to create an immensely satisfying whole.” 

 

Many of Schumann’s works were considered unplayable in his time, and acclaimed contemporary pianist Jon Nakamatsu has said that Schuhmann composed “without any regard to the human hand.” Hehman spent more than a year perfecting and memorizing Carnaval. 

 

“I started last summer with the intent of learning it in a few months, but it has been such a challenge that it took me over a year to get it to its current level,” he said.

 

He agreed with Nakamatsu’s assessment of Schumann’s writing. “Pianists always comment on how awkward his music feels under our fingers; this is at least partly because Schumann ruined his own hands in an attempt to strengthen his individual fingers, so he did not actually play most of the music he wrote,” he said. “He left the playing to his wife, the phenomenal pianist-composer Clara Wieck, who makes an appearance as a character in Carnaval.” 

 

The piece can sound very chaotic at times, he said, but also has moments of tenderness and beauty. “I encourage any attendees to focus in on those moments, and then hold on tight when the music becomes a whirlwind—even when it's chaotic, it is a lot of fun,” he said. “To help people keep track of the 21 movements, I have a series of images that will be projected while I’m performing. That way, each character at the masked ball will be easy to follow as they arrive and exit in turn.”

 

As to how he went about memorizing a 28-minute work, Hehman said it was “a never-ending process of repetition, listening, slowing yourself down, repetition again, reading the score away from the piano, and then more repetition.”

 

“Muscle memory is important, but the most essential part of memory for the musician is the cultivation of aural memory, or something music psychologists often call audiation. I compare it to hearing a narrator in your head while reading a book,” he said. “Over the course of the year-and-some-change I've worked on this piece and the other pieces on this program, I’ve worked to cultivate a strong auditory image of the music so that I can hear everything in my head before I even sit down to play.” 

 

That skill takes years to master, and he is still growing it, said Hehman, who graduated from Bellarmine in 2014. “I gave my first recital as a sophomore at Bellarmine back in 2012, and I have tried to give at least one every year since then. Every time I do it, every time I learn a new piece, the audiation gets a little stronger.” 

 

Even when he was not actively working on Carnaval, it was obvious his mind was still on it, he said. 

 

“I’ll be sitting and watching TV, and my wife will turn to me and ask me, ‘What are you playing?’ She'll notice that my fingers are moving subconsciously—I'm not even aware of it!”

 

Featured composers: Robert Schumann’s Carnaval will constitute the second half of the program; the first half will include Margaret Bonds’ Spiritual Suite and several short works by Duke Ellington.

When: 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29

Where: Bellarmine University’s Cralle Theater

Free and open to the public