Phrenology, eh? It’s cobblers, plainly, but Robert Schumann didn’t know that and his biographer Martin Geck tells how in 1846, near Dresden, he submitted to a full once-over from Europe’s leading cranium-fondler Robert Noel. Noel clearly knew his patient, because his analysis echoes what anyone who knows Schumann’s music might say about the personality of this supreme romantic. Noel detected ‘sense of form – modesty – strength of purpose’. Touchingly, he also detected ‘anxiety that stands in the way of happiness’. Then the clincher, the observation that grabs straight at the heart of any Schumann fan: ‘emotional through and through’.

Well, we Schumann-lovers will take all the back-up we can get. Few great symphonists are so readily belittled, and the really hurtful thing is that we know (particularly if we’re not pianists) that his enemies have a point. Schumann’s orchestration doesn’t lift effortlessly off the page like Mendelssohn’s; his chamber music leaves string players wrestling with unwieldy keyboard figuration. Behind it all, there’s the horror and pity of his final mental collapse; the cruel implication that some of his most personal late works are the music of a disintegrating personality. To persevere with all this, you need to identify with Schumann and love – really love – his music.........

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