Tomorrow I’m playing a solo recital at the Lammermuir Festival, a lovely festival which takes place in various locations, sacred and secular, across the beautiful county of East Lothian in Scotland.

I have practised my programme to the point of feeling a keen desire to play something else as well. So I’ve been trying to learn Robert Schumann’s Abegg Variations, which I’ve always liked but never tackled properly. They are hard! A lot of places seem to call for a hand bigger than mine.

At one point, Schumann marks one of the bars to be played ‘con accuratezza’ (see photo). Which of course means ‘with accuracy’.

That made me smile. ‘With accuracy’? As opposed to what, Herr Schumann? Surely all the notes are meant to be played accurately?

The bar in question has a chromatic run in the right hand. Maybe he wanted to make sure that the run was played with precision and didn’t come out as a colourful cloud made thicker by the pedal. I don’t think it can be an editorial marking – no editor would put in such an eccentric marking on his own initiative.

But I did also wonder whether Schumann was used to – or braced for – a certain looseness in the interpretation of what he had written. Or even whether he himself was used to dashing through or leaving out bits he hadn’t had time to find good fingerings for.

I don’t recall coming across that instruction in his later piano music, so he must have decided to trust the pianist. Or trust his own notation, perhaps.