"The Davidsbündlertänze are concealed behind Carnaval like faces behind a mask." That’s one description Robert Schumann gave to the set of 18 piano pieces he composed in 1837, comparing them to the masked-ball set he’d finished two years earlier. But then to his unofficial fiancée, Clara Wieck (whose father had threatened to shoot Robert on sight), he wrote of these "Dances of the League of David" that "the whole story is a polterabend." (That’s a German wedding-eve party where crockery gets smashed.) And he also called them "dances of death, St. Vitus’ dances, dances of graces and goblins." In other words, this fabulously romantic work has many faces. On a new release from Deutsche Grammophon that also includes the Concert sans orchestre, Maurizio Pollini tries to unmask as many as possible.

The DavidsbŸndlertŠnze story actually begins back in 1831, when Schumann finished his Opus 2 Papillons, a set of waltzes and polonaises inspired by the Jean Paul novel Flegeljahre ("Fledgling Years"). This book by Schumann’s favorite writer has as its protagonists twins Walt and Vult, whose full names, Gottwalt and Quod Deus Vult, one German, one Latin, both mean "What God Wills." Papillons draws on Flegeljahre’s "Larven-Tanz" chapter, where the aggressive, sarcastic Vult and the dreamy, poetic Walt dress up for a Shrove Tuesday ball; "papillon" means "butterfly" and "larve" means "chrysalis" — but also "mask," or "face." At the masked ball, Vult makes his brother exchange costumes; pretending to be Walt, he dances with Wina (whom they both love), and she’s transported by Vult-as-Walt — that is, by the (illusory) fusion of thought and action. At the end of Papillons we hear a tolling clock strike A six times; the fantasy dissipates at daybreak.

Schumann turned Walt and Vult into the two sides of his own personality, Eusebius and Florestan. They "wrote" the reviews in Neue Zeitschrift fŸr Musik, the music journal he founded in 1834, and they turn up as personae (the Latin word for mask) in his second great masked-ball piece, Carnaval, where "Papillons" flit by Florestan and we also meet real-life musicians "Chopin" and "Paganini" and girlfriends "Chiarina" (Clara) and "Estrella" (Ernestine von Fricken, to whom Robert was briefly engaged). It all ends with the "March of the DavidsbŸndler Against the Philistines," in which the members of the Davidsbund, Schumann’s imaginary secret society, rout the philistines of German musical taste (who were legion) just as David defeated the Biblical Philistines. Schumann might have been an earnest young romantic, but he had a sense of humor: this "march" is in 3/4 and is actually a martial waltz. The Gro§vater Tanz (traditional last dance of a German evening — it closes out the Christmas party in The Nutcracker), which put an end to the festivities in Papillons, is overcome here, as if to say that life should be all masks and no faces.

It’s not easy, then, to find the faces beneath the masks of DavidsbŸndlertŠnze. The first "book" — there are two, with nine dances each — opens with a "motto" taken from Clara’s Opus 6 No. 5 mazurka. (Schumann liked to draw on Clara’s compositions: he alluded to this mazurka in "Chiarina," and he used the theme from a lost Andantino of hers in DavidsbŸndlertŠnze, in the Concert sans orchestre, and in his sublime C-major Fantasie.) Schumann unravels (undresses?) it in the course of the work while Florestan and Eusebius battle their way through lŠndler-waltzes (notably 1.2, 2.5, and 2.8) and polkas (1.8, 2.3, 2.4) and tarantellas (1.6) and even a manic minuet (1.9), not to mention canons (1.3, 2.7). Each piece is credited to Florestan or Eusebius — or both; typical is the "Wild and lustig" 2.4, where Eusebius interrupts Florestan’s demonic polka with a chorale-like trio. Schumann was never wilder or crazier: 1.3 is marked "etwas hahnebŸchn," a reference to the Davidsbund name of his Kšnigsberg friend J.F.E. Sokolowski, and has a cameo appearance by Carnaval’s "Promenade." The tonality flirts with B minor, but each book ends in C (for Clara) major. Even here there are riddles: why is 1.9 obsessed with C-sharp? Schumann gives clues: for 1.9, "With this Florestan concluded, and his lips quivered painfully"; for 2.9, "Overflowing, Eusebius deemed fitting the following, whereby great bliss spoke from his eyes." It’s as if life were a study in B minor and only Clara could make it "overflow" into C major. But midnight sounds in the 12 low C’s with which DavidsbŸndlertŠnze ends — will marriage (Friedrich Wieck notwithstanding, they finally did wed, in 1840) turn Robert and Clara into real-life pumpkins? In one of his last masterpieces, Robert Schumann’s DavidsbŸndlertŠnze, George Balanchine had those 12 C’s tolling Schumann into madness (he died mad and, probably, syphilitic in 1856), with Clara unable to save him.

In 1850 and ’51, Schumann coventionalized DavidsbŸndlertŠnze, adding repeats, filling in textures, truncating quirky endings (1.9), and spreading superficial cheer (the big D-flat in 1.8 becomes a D); he also removed the Eusebius and Florestan designations and even discarded the piece’s epigraph: "In each and every time/Joy and sorrow go hand in hand/Be calm in joy/And meet sorrow with courage." Maurizio Pollini, whose recordings of the Fantasie and Schumann’s ƒtudes symphoniques (original title: DavidsbŸndleretŸden) are legends, is having none of this; he plays the 1837 version. His Deutsche Grammophon reading is not very different from the 1984 Salzburg aircheck that appeared briefly on Exclusive (with a 1982 Kreisleriana, Schumann’s homage to E.T.A. Hoffmann), but the sound is more focused and the details have that frisson that separates Pollini from the pack. He may favor the Italianate Florestan over the Germanic Eusebius, line and momentum over color and weight, but he nonetheless holds the pair in precarious balance. Pollini measures cogent tempos (29:20, as against Gordon Boelzner’s 41-minute reading for Balanchine) against limpid textures and tender, ethereal phrasing (listen to the heartbreaking eight-bar coda of 2.5). It’s explosive Schumann, not the easy-chair kind; few pianists keep you this alert to Robert’s half-cadence evaporations and dissonant inner voices and bar brawls between bar and meter. Clara found DavidsbŸndlertŠnze (and Kreisleriana) just a little too wild and crazy; Pollini does not. The coda in 1.6 could be a little softer, the sforzando F in the first phrase of 2.1 a little clearer; and you wouldn’t guess at how crucial those 12 C’s are at the end. But listen to how in the trio of 1.7 he plays the natural flow of the melody against the bar line, reminding you it’s the second note of each phrase that’s the first beat of the measure. He’s also the only pianist I know (out of some 30) who doesn’t let Florestan return at the end of 2.6.

Claudio Arrau, GŽza Anda, and Alexis Weissenberg tightroped through DavidsbŸndlertŠnze with similar sophistication and sentiment, but those performances never made to it CD. Fortunately Wilhelm Kempff, all idiosyncrasy and imagination, is still available in a four-disc Deutsche Grammophon Schumann box; it sells for just $30, so file it under "Bargains of the Century." Jšrg Demus, massive and passionate, is available outside his Nuova Era complete-Schumann box but not easy to find. Is there an even better DavidsbŸndlertŠnze in the offing? Ask Russell Sherman.

And the Concert sans orchestre? Schumann’s piano sonatas are thorny, large-canvas works with no intriguing titles. The Concert sans orchestre started out life in 1836 as a five-movement sonata with two scherzos, but after a discussion with his publisher the scherzos were dropped and the piece appeared as Pollini plays it here: Allegro brillante; Quasi variazoni: Andantino di Clara Wieck; and Presto possibile. In 1853 Schumann revised it, restoring the second scherzo and turning it into his Sonata in F minor (Opus 14), which is what a spikier Vladimir Horowitz (RCA) and a more furious Demus play. Pollini is magisterial, but the scherzo is a definite plus (imagine the rising and falling of Giannozzo’s hot-air balloon in the comic appendix to Jean Paul’s Titan). This isn’t minor Schumann, but it hurts to think that Pollini, who’s approaching 60, could have filled out the disc with Papillons, or Carnaval, or Kreisleriana. Those who would go face to face with Schumann need all the help they can get.