The great conductor and music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, calls Robert Schumann (1810-56) “the true Romantic. If there’s anyone who sums it up, he truly does.” The second of his four symphonies is the most widely played today, but all four of these works are truly unusual and compelling masterpieces, with which the Berlin Philharmonic has a longstanding and particularly deep association. The playing sparkles, simultaneously conveying and consolidating opposites: lightness and depth, grace and gravity, delicacy and drama. This debut from the Berlin Philharmonic’s own label, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings, is the ultimate expression of the soul of Robert Schumann, the inventor of Romanticism in music.