The question “Why add music to such perfect poetry?” preoccupied Schumann long and intensively. His first compositional approach to Goethe’s “Faust” began in 1844, but it was not until 1851 that he finally completed the Scenes. At Liszt’s suggestion, Schumann added an overture in 1853, a symphonic “instrumental introduction” which atmospherically evokes the action of the Scenes but has no direct thematic reference to them.

As an independent overture, the work has been played relatively rarel...