A secret engagement, a composer as prospective father-in-law and several rival publishing houses – it was against this backdrop that the work was composed. His youthful and passionate love for Ernestine von Fricken was short-lived, but it occasioned Schumann in 1837 to write the “intensely emotional variations” on a theme of her father’s, which were eventually to become the “Orchestral etudes”.

Fifteen years later a new edition was published, authorised by Schumann, containing such important ...