The Renaissance positioned man at the centre of the world; in the 19th century, Romanticism found its source in the affirmation of ‘self’. Schumann (1810-1856), more than any other, imbues his works with the vicissitudes of his own existence, where the heart takes precedence over reason. A fine, sensitive soul, bipolar to extremes, he entrusted his torments and his dreams to the piano, revealing an urge to fuse artistic expression with an inextinguishable desire for the absolute. His universe defies logic and common sense, although his daring trajectories are sometimes held back by an irrepressible need to hold on to a reassuring past. Suffused with the mysteries of night - like the copper and bronze tinted paintings of Caspar David Friedrich - and the fearfulness of deep forests wrapped in profound darkness, he suggests a world of allusions (or illusions?), of masks, metaphors and literary reminiscences. The double personality of the contrasting faces of Eusebius (the melancholic) and Florestan (the enthusiast) springs from the spidery calligraphy of the score, over which hover the wings of genius.