That Clara Schumann concerto – any good?
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
In the early days of long-playing records. a man in a suit at EMI realised that the Grieg and Schumann concertos were half an hour long, in the same key of A minor and would fit on either side of a plate of shellac without requiring fillers. The logic was that Grieg’s splashy audience appeal would offset Schumann’s morose introspection and listeners could flip the record according to mood. Be that as it may, from that day on, the two concertos were as inseparable on record as Cav and Pag were on the opera stage.
This release differs in a significant respect. The Schumann concerto here, also in A minor, is by Clara…
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
In The Critic here.
“The most memorable bit is a piano-cello duet in the middle of the second movement, something I cannot recall in any other concerto.”
Third movement of Brahms’ piano concerto no 2, perhaps?
Well, there it’s a part of the movement – in Claras concerto it’s the whole 2nd movement.
No good. I also heard a chamber music piece by Clara, no good.
Please stop wasting our time with all this post-Covid woke concert programming.
Each to their own. I personally love the piano concerto. It’s not Beethoven or Brahms…..but then who is…….
Haven’t heard the other.
Don’t generalize. Some Lieder from Clara’s output are absolutely beautiful, on par with her husband’s…
Good grief, how much of a snowflake can you be? A review of one of the most outstanding composers of the Romantic era and one of the most notable female composers of all time, dismissed simply because programming women must be ‘woke’, and with no musical ciriticism to speak of, simply because you didn’t like another one of her compositions.
Clara Schmuann has been programmed before COVID, and doubtless will continue to be – it’s not what is between a composer’s legs that’s important, but what’s between their ears.
By referring to her as a one of the most notable “female composers” you are feeding into the idea that female composers are in some way different from “composers.” Male composers wrote with periods too; it’s part of musical structure.
If we eliminate the modifier, she is just a composer, and by that measure there is a reason why she, along with Amy Beach, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Joseph Schubert, and numerous others, are largely forgotten: they didn’t write music that had much impact and thus it did not survive the test of time.
It does not mean that they were overlooked or disenfranchised: they just weren’t as impactful.
She is recognized for her influence on Robert and Brahms through her constructive criticisms as a marvelous performing artist.
Snowflake
At some point I wish someone would give us a definitive list of all the things that are “woke.” I find myself continually surprised at how many varied and unexpected things are so described.
It’s a long list, but can be summarized for music: anything written by or performed by somebody who is not a white heterosexual male.
“white heterosexual male of undiluted European origin” I should have said.
No, actually, it is anything written or performed by somebody BECAUSE that person is not a white heterosexual male.
The strange thing is that the prejudice against woman composers is recent. In their own lifetimes, the ones we now know about were performed and appreciated. (Let us not go into the history of why it was more difficult for a woman to become a professional composer/performer until now.) The case with African Americans, Latin Americans and Asians is somewhat different – but their works too is usually performed for ‘non-woke’ reasons.
The assumption in certain very limited and limiting circles is, indeed, that ‘being woke’ is the only explanation.
Today, “woke” is the music of Clara Schumann. I just read another zinger elsewhere: it’s also “men who don’t earn their living working with their hands.” What will it be tomorrow? Mushrooms? The letter “P”? Is there anything too silly for someone to say now without feeling ashamed of it?
Thanks for your two cents which stink to high heaven of prejudice. I heard music by Clara Schumann long before Covid, and long before anything was “woke” in either the early positive connotation of the word or the later degenerate meaning it acquired once some members of the conservative community acquired it as a holdall it for anything and everything they disagreed with. Discuss the quality of her music as music, that would be fine, but spitting out catchphrases like ‘woke’ just stinks of a cheap political agenda.
“THAT CLARA SCHUMANN CONCERTO – ANY GOOD?”
In a word, no.
I’ll be more frank–it’s dreadful! There are lost gems still but she was very prominent and yet pianists and orchestras have largely ignored this over the last couple of centuries. I can’t blame them. I would rather have my tooth pulled then having to sit through this.
In a word, yes.
Crap but since people’s aesthetic judgement has been poisoned by DEI and grants from the government require it…
“The most memorable bit is a piano-cello duet in the middle of the second movement, something I cannot recall in any other concerto.”
How about the Liszt?
https://youtu.be/5YLqtdw7tGk
I play the Clara Schumann piano concerto and it is a beautiful work. Scholars suggest Brahms was inspired by her concerto’s slow movement’s piano-cello duet that he chose that instrumentation for his own piano concerto.
Yes. Magnificent
Beatrice Rana and Yannick Nezet-Seguin gave a compelling performance of it at Carnegie Hall – which almost salvaged a work which really cannot be saved. If Clara’s name wasn’t on this piece, nobody would know about it – it’s just not very good. OK, so she was 14 when she wrote it – but it wasn’t indicative of great things to come, and indeed they didn’t. Clara was a good miniaturist – some nice songs, some lovely, short solo & chamber pieces. Otherwise, she wisely stuck to her day-job as the greatest woman pianist of her time. And she was the magnificent muse for the great works of her husband, and also for Brahms! My god, what a fabulous woman she must have been!!!
All that and 8 kids, too.
==piano-cello duet in the middle of the second movement, something I cannot recall in any other concerto.
Brahms 2nd concerto has fine writing for solo cello and piano.
Also Tchaik 2nd concerto slow movement turns for much of it into a trio with solo cello and violin
I think you mean vinyl, not shellac. The most you could get on each side of a shellac (78 rpm) disc was about 4½ minutes.
Of the first movement, the first theme group is unlistenable, the second group is very nice but imitation Chopin, as is the development section. The whole thing is a mixed bag of fragments with a nice piano part…. it cannot stand comparison with her husband’s concerto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LUoSN7YtXI&list=PLiV3Y3KnvCtju1eYTXe5wDE8L0XHQUj6u
But it seems a good idea to dig-up those forgotten works, to see what it is, and to try to assess the quality and meaning.
The graveyard of forgotten 19th Century piano concerti is vast. And indeed they’ve all been exhumed and recorded, so that we can appreciate why they were forgotten. A few of them have some merit and deserve an occasional airing: Scharwenka #1, Rubinstein #4, and the concerti of Moszkowski, Paderewski, and Litolff. May all the others rest in eternal peace!
Without the woke culture, we would not be listening to minor composers’ (yes, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, and especially Alma Mahler are minor composers) music only because of their genitalia. It is tiring, boring, and unfair to musicians and audiences. Take your politics out of concert programs!!
But it has an interesting perspective for the future of music life: If/when underrepresented works become more & more accepted and performed, and push away the male warhorses, then THEY become on their turn suppressed and underrepresented. When in 50 years time they will be rediscovered, imagine what an overwhelimg surprise that will be.