Composer of the Week Clara Schumann and Her Circle

Composer of the Week - Clara Schumann



Episode 1 of 5 - Clara and Chopin


This week, Donald Macleod explores the lives and music of Clara Schumann and the extraordinary circle of composers and musicians she moved in. Today, the young Clara meets Fryderyk Chopin.

Clara Schumann was one of the most important and influential musicians of the 19th century. Hot-housed by her pushy and ambitious piano-teacher father, Friedrich Wieck, she made her concert debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus at the age of nine and published her first opus - a set of four mazurkas - only two years later. Friedrich's Grand Plan for Clara would ultimately be knocked off course, however, by the arrival on the scene in autumn 1830 of Robert Schumann, who became the Wiecks' live-in student. In time, a relationship blossomed, leading eventually, a decade later - when Clara had reached the age of majority - to marriage, whereupon her career very much took a back seat to looking after Robert and the eight children they would produce together. After Robert's death in 1856, Clara resumed her concert career in earnest - it was, after all, her principal source of income - but more or less stopped composing for good. Her oeuvre, some 50 works, mainly piano miniatures and songs, poses one of the most tantalizing what-ifs in music history - what if her family commitments and the social mores of her day had not constrained Clara Schumann's development as a composer? Her Piano Trio in G minor, one of less than a handful of large-scale works she was able to complete, suggests one possible answer: that she might perhaps have become one of the leading composers of the second half of the 19th century.

Clara first encountered Fryderyk Chopin in the early months of 1832. She was a seasoned virtuoso of 13, on a promotional visit to Paris; he, at 21, had put down roots in the French capital just a few months earlier - an accidental refugee from the failed Polish Uprising. Clara was in the audience for Chopin's astonishing first public Parisian recital, at the Salle Pleyel. She had already learnt one of his works, and his music would be a mainstay of her concert repertoire for the next six decades. The respect was clearly mutual - when Chopin visited Clara in Leipzig a few years later, he was impressed enough to take several of her pieces away with him.



Clara Schumann

4 Polonaises, Op 1 (No 2 in C)

Suzanne Grutzmann, piano



Chopin

Variations on Mozart's LÖ ci darem la mano, Op 2

Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra

Kazimierz Kord, conductor



Clara Schumann

SoirÇes musicales, Op 6 (No 4, Ballade in D minor); 4 Piäces caractÇristiques, Op 5 (No 4, Scäne fantastique (Le Ballet des revenants))

Suzanne Grutzmann, piano



Chopin

Cello Sonata in G minor, Op 65 (3rd mvt, Largo)

Mischa Maisky, cello

Martha Argerich, piano



Clara Schumann

Piano Concerto in A minor, Op 7 (3rd mvt, Finale. Allegro non troppo)

Lucy Parham, piano

BBC Concert Orchestra

Barry Wordsworth, conductor







Episode 2 of 5 - Clara and Robert


Today, Clara and her husband Robert, the archetypally Romantic genius whose talents she served - to the detriment of her own.


"Ah, if only he had taken me with him," Clara confided to her diary after Robert's death. Indeed, their lives had been so closely intertwined that sometimes she must have felt like the flip side of a single coin. They kept a joint marriage diary. They studied Bach together. They quoted each other's music in their own. Much of Robert's music is a love-letter to Clara, translating key events in their relationship into sound - and from the start, Clara became its principal advocate and most authoritative interpreter. She was severed from Robert not by his death but on his committal to the insane asylum at Endenich where he passed his final two years. She would spend the next 40 learning to live without him.



Clara Schumann

SoirÇes musicales, Op 6 (No 1, Toccatina in A minor)

Jozef de Beenhouwer, piano



Clara Schumann

SoirÇes musicales, Op 6 (No 2, Notturno)

Konstanze Eickhorst, piano



Robert Schumann

Novelletten, Op 21 (No 8, Sehr lebhaft (Stimme aus der Ferne))

Eric le Sage, piano



Clara Schumann

Am Strande; Warum willst du andre fragen, Op 12 No 11; Liebst du um Schînheit, Op 12 No 4; Er ist gekommen, Op 12 No 2

Christina Hîgman, soprano

Roland Pîntinen, piano



Robert Schumann

6 Etudes pour le pianoforte d'apräs les caprices de Paganini, Op 3 (No 1 in A minor; No 2 in E)

Mariya Kim, piano



Clara Schumann

Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op 20

Jozef de Beenhouwer, piano




Episode 3 of 5 - Clara, Felix and Fanny


Today, Clara and the dazzlingly talented Mendelssohns - Felix and Fanny - whose untimely deaths within a few months of each other shook her deeply.

Clara first encountered Felix Mendelssohn in 1835, on his arrival in Leipzig to take up the reins of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Ten years her senior, he held her in high esteem as a musician, and they performed together frequently, both privately and in public - including the premiäre of Clara's own Piano Concerto. Like Felix, his sister Fanny Hensel was a gifted pianist who had composed profusely from an early age. But she came from a rich Jewish banking family, and for a woman of her social standing a career as a professional musician - or indeed a career of any kind whatsoever - was simply out of the question. Despite her amateur status, though, Clara generously described Fanny as "undoubtedly the most distinguished woman musician of her time".



Fanny Hensel

Piano Trio in D, Op 11 (3rd mvt, Lied - Allegretto)

The Dartington Piano Trio (Oliver Butterworth, violin; Michael Evans, cello; Frank Wibaut, piano)



Mendelssohn

Capriccio in F sharp minor, Op 5

Howard Shelley, piano



Fanny Hensel

Verlust (Loss); Fichtenbaum und Palme (Fir Tree and Palm); Italien (Italy)

Christina Hîgman, soprano

Roland Pîntinen, piano



Mendelssohn

Octet in E flat, Op 20 (4th mvt, Presto)

Academy Chamber Ensemble



Clara Schumann

Piano Trio in G minor, Op 17

Boulanger Trio





Episode 4 of 5 - Clara and Liszt

Today, Clara and Franz Liszt - a man and musician she at first idolized but came to loathe.

"Distintissimo!" - most distinguished! - that's how the 19th-century piano superstar Franz Liszt described Clara Schumann after seeing her play in Vienna in 1838. And Clara, like most people, was absolutely bowled over by Liszt - "He cannot be compared to any other player - he is absolutely unique", she wrote in her diary. But as a composer, she gradually came to detest him, and by the time of his death she could write that "his compositions lack those very qualities which he possessed as a virtuoso; they are trivial and tedious and will certainly soon disappear from the world in the wake of his passing." Liszt, by contrast, paid Clara the compliment, late in life, of transcribing three of her songs for solo piano.



Clara Schumann

Loreley

Barbara Bonney, soprano

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano



Schubert, transcribed Liszt

Gretchen am Spinnrade (D118), S558 No 8

Yuja Wang, piano



Clara Schumann

Variations de concert pour le pianoforte sur la Cavatine du Pirate de Bellini, Op 8

Suzanne Grutzmann, piano



Clara Schumann

Impromptu in G, Op 9 (Souvenir de Vienne)

Jozef de Beenhouwer, piano



Liszt

Grandes variations de concert (HexamÇron) sur un thäme des Puritains, S654

Piano Duo Genova & Dimitrov



Clara Schumann, transcribed Liszt

Warum willst du andere fragen?, Op 12 No 3; Ich hab' in deinem Auge, Op 13 No 5; Geheimes FlÅstern, Op 23 No 3

Leslie Howard, piano.





Episode 5 of 5 - Clara and Brahms


Today, Clara and Johannes Brahms, whose friendship - and bickering - lasted over 40 years.

When Clara Schumann recalled in her diary the day she met Johannes Brahms, she described him as "God-sent". She was referring to his musical talent, but his arrival on her DÅsseldorf doorstep in October 1853 turned out to be providential for entirely different reasons. Robert Schumann had been acting erratically for some time, but Clara couldn't have imagined how quickly his situation would deteriorate. Just four months later he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was committed at his own request to the insane asylum at Endenich where he would die almost two and a half years later. Brahms, a young man of just 20, stepped into the breach as a sort of surrogate head of the household. He quickly became indispensable to Clara, offering much-needed practical as well as emotional support - helping to look after her seven surviving children, doing the household accounts and liaising with Robert's doctors about the progress of his illness. After Robert's funeral, Brahms took Clara and two of the children away for a break in Lucerne. No-one knows what transpired there - perhaps Brahms proposed marriage and Clara declined - but it was a major turning-point in their relationship. Brahms's residency at the Schumann home was over. He returned home to Hamburg, and for the next 40 years he and Clara remained the closest of platonic friends, periodically falling out but always making up. Brahms never married. Thirteen years Clara's junior, he survived her by less than 12 months.



Clara Schumann

Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, Op 23 (No 5, Das ist ein Tag, der klingen mag (This is a day of singing))

Gabriele Fontana, soprano

Konstanze Eickhorst, piano



Brahms

Scherzo in E flat minor, Op 4

Julius Katchen, piano

DECCA 455 247-2 CD 2 tk 6



Clara Schumann

3 Romances, Op 22

Lisa Batiashvili, violin

Alice Sara Ott, piano



Clara Schumann

3 Romances, Op 21

Cristina Ortiz, piano



Brahms

Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15 (2nd mvt, Adagio)

Radu Lupu, piano

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Edo de Waart, conductor



Clara Schumann

Romance in B minor, Op posth

Konstanze Eickhorst, piano


Producer: Chris Barstow


Broadcast: BBC Radio Three, 23 May ? 27 May 2016


Duration: 5x1 hour