Behind the mask . . . To plunge into the intoxicating triple-time rhythms of Robert Schumann's waltzes and polonaises from Opus 2 to Opus 26 is to cross the ballroom of his first creative decade, the years he devoted to the piano, the instrument that was an extension of himself. It is also to enter the eccentric, vulnerable imagination of the most literary of the Romantics. Beneath the multiple masks of the colourful celebrations is hidden a fabulously imaginative vision of the world! (after BRIGITTE FRANÇOIS SAPPEY).