Solo piano works and the lieder Gurn! 
These are his two main areas of activity and he excelled in both more than any other. I will not be kept quiet!! 
Ah. Schumann's
Lieder are as fine as you could want. I am partial to the op. 24
Liederkreis (even more than the
Dichterliebe, but I'll get to that in a minute). It goes without saying, though, that I view Schumann as standing no higher than second in the
Lieder pantheon - second only to Schubert. That's no small feat, when you think of the composers jockeying for the spot (Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Strauss, Wolf,
et al.). More than that, Schumann's
Lieder are of such quality that he really commands the field in his age and later. When you start to factor in everything else, it begins to pile up into a pretty daunting
oeuvre in terms of complexity and quality.
This, too, affords me the opportunity to shill for my
favorite Lieder CD[/i]. The 2002 collaboration between András Schiff and Peter Schreier (continuing their really splendid work from the Decca Schubert recordings) is - to my preferences - the best out there. Schreier's cerebral (or, intellectual: neither word has the wholly positive connotations I need) and Schiff's intelligent and precise accompaniment leads to just a nice disc. Schreier is probably my favorite tenor, and he certainly reminds me here - at somewhat advanced age - why. His "Ich grolle nicht" is, despite my overall preference for "Mit Myrthen und Rosen," simply wonderful. He manages to get a quiet bitterness and hurt going until the end. In other words, I like the disc.
