ClaraSchumann

On 9 November 1835 the sixteen-year-old Clara Wieck played her A minor Piano Concerto at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with Mendelssohn conducting. In the middle movement the orchestra stops. The piano begins a Romance in A♭ major, and a solo cello joins it, so that for a few minutes the concerto is a duet. That evening Clara also played Mendelssohn’s Capriccio brillant, and with him and Louis Rakemann she played Bach’s Concerto for Three Keyboards.

1819–⁠38Friedrich Wieck’s daughter

She was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819. Her mother, Mariane, was a pianist and singer; her father, Friedrich Wieck, taught piano and sold instruments. After their divorce in 1825, Clara remained with him. He arranged lessons in harmony, counterpoint and languages, supervised her practising and required daily walks. Private teachers supplied most of her education. He also managed her concert tours.

Her public début came in Leipzig in 1828. By 1832 she had played for Goethe in Weimar and met Chopin in Paris. Like other young virtuosos, she filled her programmes with variations and brilliant display pieces, some of them her own. The Romance variée, Op. 3, appeared in 1833 with a dedication to Robert Schumann, her father’s pupil. Robert used its theme in his own Op. 5 Impromptus. He also helped orchestrate the movement that became the finale of her concerto. Clara then added the first two movements and joined all three without a break.

Vienna received her with enthusiasm in 1838. The emperor appointed her imperial and royal chamber virtuosa, an unusual honour for a young Protestant woman from abroad. At home, her growing attachment to Robert brought her into conflict with the man who had trained her. Friedrich opposed the marriage and tried to prevent their correspondence. In 1839 Clara travelled to Paris without him. He withheld her property, including her grand piano, and the dispute went to court.

1840–⁠46Marriage, Leipzig and Dresden

Clara and Robert married at Schönefeld, near Leipzig, on 12 September 1840, the day before her twenty-first birthday. Their married life included visits to the theatre, walks, friends and music-making. It also required negotiations over the piano, since Robert needed quiet to compose and Clara needed to practise. He encouraged her compositions and helped to get them published, while the hours in which she could write or play grew fewer. Between 1841 and 1854 she bore eight children, seven of whom survived infancy.

In 1844 Robert accompanied her on a tour of Russia, where they spent time in St Petersburg and Moscow. Her reputation was greater than his at the time, and it secured engagements that his name alone could not have. Later that year they moved to Dresden, hoping that his health would improve. Clara taught and performed, and in 1846 she wrote her G minor Piano Trio. The Andante is built on a long melody, and the finale includes a fugue for the three instruments. Joseph Joachim and Mendelssohn both admired the trio.

1853Düsseldorf and the summer’s compositions

The family moved to Düsseldorf in 1850, when Robert became the city’s music director. In their last apartment there Clara had, for the first time, a room in which she could practise without disturbing him. In the summer of 1853 she composed a good deal. On 10 June, after finishing two settings of Hermann Rollett, she wrote in her diary: “Composing gives me great pleasure.” By 22 June she had written six songs. Writing had given her “hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound”.

Brahms arrived at the Schumanns’ home on 30 September 1853. Robert announced his gifts in print; Clara played his music, argued with him over it and corresponded with him for the rest of her life. Joachim, whom she had also met that year, became a regular concert partner.

1854–⁠56Endenich and Robert’s death

For decades afterwards she organised tours, negotiated fees and prepared programmes. England became a regular destination. Her daughter Marie often travelled with her, and summers were spent with family and friends and on preparing the next season’s music. Her composing dwindled to occasional pieces, arrangements and cadenzas, while she went on performing. In 1868 she told Brahms that practising her art was a great part of herself: “It is the air I breathe.”

1878–⁠96Teaching in Frankfurt and last years

Her programmes helped make Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Robert Schumann and Brahms regular items in the concert repertoire. She played major works from memory, and through her partnership with Joachim she brought chamber music to the same audiences. From 1878 she taught advanced pianists at the Hoch Conservatoire in Frankfurt, assisted by her daughters. Fanny Davies and Adelina de Lara were among her pupils. Davies later recorded Robert’s Piano Concerto and solo works; de Lara also left recordings. There is no recording of Clara herself.

She edited Robert’s collected works and an instructive edition of his piano music, recording what she knew of his phrasing and performance. She and Brahms left the Violin Concerto out of the collected edition; Joachim shared their reservations. It was not performed in public until 1937. She outlived three of her adult children, and supported her son Ferdinand’s six children when his illness left him unable to provide for them.

She gave her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891 and retired from the conservatoire in 1892. Her hands troubled her and her hearing deteriorated, though she went on playing privately. She died on 20 May 1896 and was buried beside Robert in Bonn.