Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Robert Schumann

Schumann Birthday Celebration on The Classical Network

Now the Schumann is on the other foot.

Join us on The Classical Network, as we pick up our celebration of the birthday today of Robert Schumann. Among our featured works will be the rarely-heard Violin Concerto, with Elmar Oliveira the soloist. We’ll also mark the birthdays of Tomaso Albinoni, Erwin Schulhoff, and Emanuel Ax.

The afternoon will begin with a visit from Dr. Lyn Ransom, outgoing artistic director of VOICES Chorale. To cap her 30-year tenure with the ensemble, Ransom will conduct a farewell concert featuring soloists, chorus, and orchestra, in Johannes Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem” and Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana.” The concert, part of a VOICES gala weekend, will take place at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on June 16 at 8 p.m.

The music is Romantic with a capital “R” today (when it’s not Baroque or Dadaist). If the Schumann fits, wear it, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 8, 2017
Schumann’s Life Music on WPRB

A would-be concert pianist, he’s said to have destroyed his hand through the use of a finger-strengthening device of his own design. He took his underage sweetheart’s father, who also happened to be his teacher, to court to sue for the right to marry, ultimately winning that right the day before she came of age. He went mad from syphilis, hurled himself into the Rhine, and spent his final months in an asylum. His name was Robert Schumann, and he was one of the most romantic of Romantic composers.

Join me tomorrow morning on WPRB, as we celebrate Schumann on the anniversary of his birth with rarely-heard works by the musicians he championed, pieces by lesser-known figures from his circle, and fabulous recordings of some of his own enduring classics. A highlight will be Sir Thomas Beecham’s reading of incidental music composed for Lord Byron’s dramatic poem “Manfred.”

If you’ve got a craving for cravats, drop in (to the Rhine or otherwise) this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. It will be all the Schumann we can shoe in, on Classic Ross Amico.

June 7, 2017
Ides of March Schumann & Julius Caesar

Beware the Ides of March!

Now that I’ve got you looking over your shoulder, here’s Robert Schumann’s “Julius Caesar Overture.”

Schumann has been in the news recently, as sketches for his Piano Trio No. 1 have resurfaced in the U.S. and been purchased by the Saxony State Library, with the help of the German federal government and cultural foundations in both Germany and the U.S.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/notes-for-schumanns-piano-trio-no-1-bought-for-six-figure-sum/

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” *

(*With apologies to the “Carry On” movies)

March 15, 2016
Woldemar Bargiel Clara Schumann’s Forgotten Brother

Today is the birthday of Woldemar Borgiel (1828-1897). Woldemar is not to be confused with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named from the “Harry Potter” series. Rather, he was the half-brother of Clara Schumann.

His mother had been unhappily married to Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, who, judging from his role as the inflexible impediment to his daughter’s marriage to Robert Schumann, must have been a barrel of laughs.

Woldemar, who was nine years younger than Clara, benefited from his brother-in-law’s advocacy. Schumann and Mendelssohn used their influence to gain him entrance into the Leipzig Conservatory. There, he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Niels Wilhelm Gade and Julius Rietz.

It was the Schumanns who arranged for the publication of some of Woldemar’s early works, including his Piano Trio No. 1. He would hold positions at several conservatories, the most prestigious of which was the Hochschule für Musik Berlin, where he taught for a good deal of his life. He also assisted Brahms as co-editor of complete editions of Schumann’s and Chopin’s works.

Woldemar was not a prolific composer, but he was a reliable one. There is nothing to fear from saying his name.

Bargiel’s Adagio for Cello and Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg47SjRFVmo

October 3, 2015
Schumanns’ Forbidden Love Story & Musical Legacy

On this date in 1840, the Schumanns finally got hitched. The couple had wanted to marry for years, but Clara’s father – Robert’s former teacher, Friedrich Wieck – bitterly opposed the match, so violently in fact that the matter landed everyone in court.

At the time of their first meeting, Robert was 20 years-old and a live-in student at the Wiecks’. Clara was 11. Clearly circumstances were problematic. The minute Clara turned 18, she accepted Robert’s proposal of marriage. The elder Wieck declined to grant his permission, and the young couple was compelled to bring suit against him. In the end, the judge ruled in the lovers’ favor, and the two were at last able to wed – one day before Clara’s 21st birthday, at which point she would no longer have needed her father’s consent!

Ah well. In the interim, after he had been tossed out of the house, Robert’s passion for Clara was sublimated into ardent love letters and bursts of creative energy. He composed reams of piano music at white heat up until the year of their marriage. Thereafter, he wrote for piano and orchestra, always with Clara in mind.

The two maintained a joint diary, and the entries are frequently touching. The Schumanns, like any married couple, had their issues, but they clearly loved one another very much. They became one of the great power couples of their time, with Robert a composing dynamo and Clara one of the great concert pianists of her day. More than 20 years after Robert’s death, she became a professor at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Her 61 year concert career played a huge role in molding public taste in so far as what we have come to expect, down to the present day, from a piano recital.

Happy anniversary to the happy couple.

Schumann’s “Widmung” (“Dedication”), written as a wedding present for Clara:

Schumann’s love letters, read by Sting!

September 12, 2015

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