Vleugels, about Robert and Clara Schumann, is mainly about the music ★★★☆☆

Every week Robert Schumann puts the letter F in his diary, sometimes even a few times. The F stands for ‘ficken’, and that means that his wife Clara also has to believe it. With pleasure apparently: the musician couple had eight children. In the performance wings those F-scenes are played by actors Saskia Temmink and Thom Hoffman who make a kind of funny F-dance. It is one of the few frivolities in this production that is somewhere between a theatrical concert and musical theatre.

The stage is largely reserved for the Storioni Trio: Bart van de Roer (piano), Wouter Vossen (violin) and Marc Vossen (cello). They play a number of compositions by both Clara and Robert Schumann and in between Temmink and Hoffman read from the diaries and love letters of their protagonists. They do this from a desk – so both music and text come from a sheet.

This narrative form produces a theatrically unexciting performance, which relies mainly on the carefully performed music. On the large backdrop we occasionally see a slideshow of cities and regions where the Schumanns have performed.

In terms of content, the division of roles between man and woman that emerges from the letters and diaries is the most interesting. Clara turns out to be a musical prodigy who plays the piano beautifully and gives concerts at a young age. All this under the guidance of her strict father, the music educator Friedrick Wieck. Robert was one of his students and when the couple fell in love, her father strongly opposed it. “My father is my deepest wound,” she writes.

Love won, but Clara struggled quite a bit with her role as daughter, wife, mother and artist. Robert becomes mentally ill at 46 and ends up in complete madness. In between, we listen to informative reports of the couple’s travels through Europe. They also visit Rotterdam, where Prince Frederik of the Netherlands attends a concert. The prince is deeply impressed by Clara’s playing and afterwards asks Robert if he ‘does something in music too’.

When Robert is already quite far gone, Clara finds support in the composer Johannes Brahms fourteen years younger – ‘that blond angel with his noise’ . He makes her rather impetuous advances, but also proves caring. By Brahms the Storioni Trio plays the beautiful Allegro con moto from Piano trio opus 8 and frankly that sounds nicer than some of the Schumann studies.

Temmink is quite tight in the way she says her text, almost subdued, Hoffman acts more off the page. Sometimes he even goes all out, like when he’s going to conduct the trio, as if he’s auditioning for the TV show Maestro†

wings ends beautifully still: widow Clara muses about her life and about her children, while we look at photos in which she becomes that child prodigy girl from old woman again. Until the light goes out and the musicians leave one by one. Even the music stops.