Stranger than Fiction (Schumann's Violin Concerto)
Today, we're continuing our PT party for Robert Schumann's 200th birthday. There's much about his life that's worthy of a Gothic novel: passion, romance, madness, death. If you add in a seance and a brush with Hitler's Nazi Germany, it could be a summer blockbuster. The funny thing is, it's all true. The seance and the Nazis don't enter the picture until 80 years after Schumann's death, and all center around the premiere of his violin concerto. All the details are in hour one, plus a performance by violinist Thomas Zehetmair and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.