The whole human condition—frailty included—is worth inhabiting. This understanding finds vivid expression in Schumann's early piano music. Bipolarity, though at times debilitating, encouraged Schumann to cultivate a new kind of imagination, a new possibility that circumvented the limitations of his drastic temperamental states. 

Mia Chung-Yee is a concert pianist, Beethoven scholar, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Octet Collaborative at MIT. She has performed globally, taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, and is renowned for her musical explorations of faith and suffering.