× Upcoming Events About Us Ballet Opera Philharmonic Other Performances Learning Donate Sponsors Past Events
Clara Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7

Clara Schumann, née Wieck, was a child prodigy, whose father, Friedrich Wieck (1785-1873), promoted and directed her early career with an iron hand. Clara made her public debut as a piano soloist at age eleven with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, going on to become one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. Her intensely serious approach to the music she performed, transformed – almost single-handedly – the solo piano recital from a showplace for the performer to one for the composer.

She was also an able composer, but in the nineteenth century Germany was distinctly unreceptive to any such ambitions in a woman, a fact she herself realized quite early. She noted in her diary: “A woman must not desire to compose – none has been able to do it, and why should I expect to? It would be arrogance...” Nevertheless she left behind a number of compositions, most of them for piano solo and for voice and piano.

When Clara finally broke with her father to marry Robert Schumann (her father's student), the marriage turned out to be as rough as the highs and lows of Robert’s bi-polar disease. Although the couple was devoted to each other, sharing musical and literary tastes, Clara continued to perform in public between and during her eight pregnancies as the chief breadwinner of the family and the more famous of the pair. The late-blooming, emotionally unstable Robert adored Clara, immortalizing her in musical code in many of his compositions; yet, he frequently skulked at the edge of her limelight. Following a suicide attempt, Robert spent the the last two years of their marriage in an insane asylum where he died in 1856. Clara tirelessly promoted and played his music both before and after his death. 

Clara Wieck composed the Piano Concerto in A Minor between 1833 and 1835 under the tutelage of her father and Robert. It was a happier time for all concerned; Clara was only 13, and the romance with Robert that was to entail such bitterness was still in the future. It is Clara’s only completed orchestral work that has survived. The third movement, orchestrated by Robert, was composed first and performed several times in public under the title Konzertsatz. Clara went on to compose the two other movements and orchestrate them herself, premiering the completed work in November 1835 in the Leipziger Gewandhaus with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. She revised the Concerto before publication in 1837. 

Clara's Concerto is a significant piece, both in terms of length and depth. It certainly belongs to the world of her teacher's Romanticism; many of the themes have Robert's fingerprints all over them. The 1837 revision we have today is probably a far cry from the composer's adolescent attempt. 

The three movements of the Concerto are played without a pause. The first movement is in a variant of sonata allegro form, in which there are three themes, each one developed immediately after its introduction, so that there is no formal development section. The Concerto begins with a majestic theme in the orchestra, taken up quickly by the piano. The second theme, introduced by the piano, acts as a modulating transition into the final theme. There is a short reprise of the opening theme and a transition based on it that leads directly into the second movement. The tender Romanza, is exclusively for the piano and solo cello. The Finale, almost as long as the other two movements put together, is rondo based on the popular polonaise dance rhythm. Although Clara may not have been familiar with Chopin's piano concertos, the pianistic style in her own work indicates that she was familiar, at least with his solo piano music.