Clara Schumann

Barbara Bonney's recital of the Schumanns' songs is prefaced, in the booklet-note, with a little feminist homily from the singer defending the reputation of Clara as woman and artist. Clara hardly needs that kind of defence nowadays, witness recent CDs by Skovhus and Stutzmann, plus several others not reviewed in these pages; her songs are far from patronized, let alone neglected. Yet, for all the advocacy of these singers, her inspiration remains for me intermittent, though thoroughly conventional songs are occasionally leavened by notably individual ones, such as, here, her very last and unpublished song, Loreley, which vividly conjures up that dangerous creature, particu lady in the hectic piano part, evocatively played by Ashkenazy. Indeed it seems that Heine most inspired her, as "Sic liebten sich beide" from her Op. 13 provoked a setting of economically intense meaning, to which Bonney finely responds.

– Gramophone [9/1997].

After much research, Gudrun Schumann presents a second collection of works by Schumann and his creative contemporaries. These are interesting compositions. The works by Theodor Kirchner and Carl Reinecke are premiere recordings.

This is the romantic story of a three-way love-affair told to us in music. We know that the young Brahms, as beautiful as a star, made a very noticed irruption within the couple Schumann. "Arrival of Brahms, a genius! Notes Robert in his diary with an extraordinary intuition. The sequel is told by Shuichi Okada on violin and Clément Lefebvre on piano, two young musicians of the National Conservatory of Music of Paris, co-producer of the present, where they deftly weave the links between the three characters. Schumann's First Sonata in A minor, Op. 105, opens fire, followed by two excerpts from the famous Sonata F-A-E, composed by Schumann, Brahms and Dietrich, the latter unfortunately being systematically left out by the violinists. Caught in the vice between the two men who love him, here is Clara with his Three Romances, Op. 22 which precedes the very melancholy Sonata No. 1, Op. 78, "Regen-Sonate" by Brahms. The music gathered here speaks better than words of how the three composers respond to one another and become a kind of common language, that of the impulses of the heart, of the outpouring of feelings and the unspoken.

A release which celebrates the talents and importance of the ‘other’ Mendelssohn and Schumann, who emerge from the shadows of their illustrious family names in a blaze of triumphant chamber music.