Kreisleriana + Carnaval

Audiences always love Carnaval, but Kreisleriana is a lesser known work and, in my opinion, is widely underplayed. But I guess I can see the reasons for this. One has to decide if he/she performs for the audience or for himself. I have played Carnaval but never Kreisleriana, and I can imagine that it could be one of those pieces that is more enjoyable for the performer than for the audience. Not to discredit the aural effect of the piece though! It has moments of beauty that Carnaval never even touches, but it does lack Carnaval's extroverted character that pleases so many.
Both pieces are a journey, and each has its individual story. Carnaval is a journey through scenes and characters, sometimes highlighting only vague images (such as the sad + happy clowns or an evening at the ball), and other times it makes specific reference to actual people (Chopin, Paganini, and the two women whom Schumann loved). Kreisleriana, on the contrary, is much more abstract. It is a life journey permeated with contradiction and emotion. Simple forms such as binary or ternary prevail in these short pieces, symbolizing this journey. Schumann loses himself in each of the eight fantasies, yet he always manages to find his way home.
Carnaval is evidence enough of Schumann's contradictory nature, but Kreisleriana is a true display of such. Perhaps it is just because the piece is less familiar to me than Carnaval, but the brutal contrasts and adjustments in character (with no attempt on Schumann's part to reconcile this!) in Kreisleriana strike me more heavily than those in Carnaval. Kreisleriana contains a lifetime of emotions, from frenzy to bliss, demonic and haunted to ecclesiastical, even suspicious at times. In each of the eight pieces, neither beauty nor conflict can exist without the other. They are always intertwined; neither lasts long before it is interrupted by the other.