Clara & Robert Schumann

Kindly supported by:

CLARA & ROBERT SCHUMANN Thursday 22 April 2021, Perth Concert Hall –––––

SCO.ORG.UK

PROGRAMME

Season 2020/21

CLARA & ROBERT SCHUMANN

Kindly supported by:

A grant from the ABO Trust’s Sirens programme (supporting the promotion of music by historical women composers) made this performance possible.

Thursday 22 April 2021, 7.30pm Perth Concert Hall R Schumann Overture, Genoveva C Schumann arr. Swensen Three Romances for Violin and Orchestra R Schumann Symphony No 1 ‘Spring’ Joseph Swensen Conductor Stephanie Gonley Violin Introduced by Joseph Swensen and Stephanie Gonley

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Our Musicians

YOUR ORCHESTRA FIRST VIOLIN Stephanie Gonley Leader Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’Dea Siún Milne Fiona Alexander Amira Bedrush-McDonald Wen Wang SECOND VIOLIN Marcus Barcham Stevens Gordon Bragg Rachel Spencer Sarah Bevan-Baker Niamh Lyons Stewart Webster Rachel Smith Niamh Lyons VIOLA Felix Tanner Brian Schiele Steve King Kathryn Jourdan CELLO Philip Higham Donald Gillan Eric de Wit Niamh Molloy BASS Nikita Naumov Adrian Bornet

FLUTE Brontë Hudnot Lee Holland OBOE Robin Williams Mary James CLARINET Jean Johnson William Stafford BASS CLARINET William Stafford BASSOON Paul Boyes Alison Green HORN Patrick Broderick Jamie Shield Rachel Brady Christine Smith TRUMPET Peter Franks Marcus Pope TROMBONE Dávur Juul Magnussen Cillian Ó’Ceallacháin Rob Collinson TIMPANI Louise Goodwin PERCUSSION Iain Sandilands

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR R Schumann (1810-1856) Overture, Genoveva (1849) C Schumann (1819-1896) Three Romances for Violin and Orchestra arr. Swensen (1853)

––––– Clara and Robert Schumann formed one of the most remarkable partnerships in classical music history. Yet you’d be forgiven for thinking it was very much a one-way street, that Clara’s role was to serve as inspiration, critic and confidante to the greater talents of her betterknown husband. Certainly until recently, little attention was paid to Clara’s own compositions, or to her considerable achievements as a performer. But during their lifetimes, in fact, it was often Robert who felt overshadowed by Clara’s talents and international fame as a pianist – and not, it has to be said, without good reason.

Andante molto Allegretto: Mit zartem Vortrage Leidenschaftlich schnell

R Schumann (1810-1856) Symphony No 1 ‘Spring’, Op 38 (1841) Andante un poco maestoso - Allegro molto vivace Larghetto Scherzo. Molto vivace Allegro animato e grazioso

They first met as children. Clara was nine and Robert was 18, and receiving piano lessons from the eminent Leipzig pianist and pedagogue Friedrich Wieck, who also happened to be Clara’s father. The two youngsters made mutual declarations of love when Clara was just a teenager, and maintained a secret relationship through love letters and furtive rendezvous. When her father found out, he forbade all further meetings between them: nonetheless Robert proposed once Clara turned 18, and when Clara’s father refused permission for the marriage, the couple opted to settle the matter in court. The judge ruled in their favour, and they were married in Leipzig in 1840, on the eve of Clara’s 21st birthday, the date when she would no longer have required her father’s permission anyway.

(After the first two years of their marriage, Wieck was reconciled – and eager to see his grandchildren.)

And if Robert Schumann can be viewed as the archetypical Romantic artist – fragile, somewhat self-absorbed, prone to extreme mood swings, and immersed in music and

During their lifetimes, in fact, it was often Robert who felt overshadowed by Clara’s talents and international fame as a pianist – and not, it has to be said, without good reason.

Clara and Robert Schumann, illustration from Famous Composers and their Works, 1906

literature from his childhood – we might see Clara as an archetypical child prodigy. Her parents divorced when she was just five, and she maintained only limited contact with her mother, who moved from Leipzig to

Despite having composed several works earlier in her life, however, Clara slowed considerably after her marriage to Robert, not because he actively discouraged her (as Gustav did with

Berlin. Her father took her upbringing very seriously, pushing her hard in her education and immersing her in music (perhaps at the expense of other areas), to the extent that she gave her debut piano recital at the age of nine, and began touring aged 11, receiving praise right across Europe from figures including Franz Liszt.

Clara continued performing after her marriage to Robert, and indeed remained the main income provider in the household, as well as taking charge of the family’s finances and general household affairs.

Nonetheless, it was a balanced, mutually supportive relationship, as revealed in the joint family diary that Robert gave Clara on their wedding day, and to which they

Alma Mahler, for instance), but more because her focus shifted more fully to performances and touring as a pianist.

Nonetheless, the responsibilities of home life and supporting her composer husband made an unavoidable impact on her opportunities to compose, as Robert observed rather ruefully in his own diary: “Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she

both contributed.

cannot work them out.”

Composing gives me great pleasure. There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of selfforgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

Clara Schumann

Clara herself clearly enjoyed the process of creating music, writing: “Composing gives me great pleasure. There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-

and was only allowed entry two days before his death. She maintained a very successful concert career for the remaining years of her long life – she lived for four decades after her husband’s death (and was

forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.” She also questioned her own abilities, however, notoriously observing: “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it.

Should I expect to be the one?”

predeceased by four of their eight children) – including numerous tours of Britain with violinist Joseph Joachim. In January 1867, she played in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, and her eldest daughter Marie reported that at the Edinburgh recital Clara “was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore.”

The first clear signs of Robert’s severe mental disorder appeared as early as 1833 in a serious depressive episode, and he would die in 1856, at the age of just 46, after two years at the mental asylum at Endenich, where he’d referred himself following a suicide attempt. Though the couple’s close friend Johannes Brahms visited him regularly, Clara was forbidden

It was also Clara, through fidelity and love, though perhaps also somewhat ironically, who tirelessly championed her late husband’s music, overcoming the somewhat cool receptions it initially received to bring it firmly into the classical canon. Clara’s own music – which runs to just 23 published works – long languished largely unheard, until a renewal of interest in recent years.

by the doctors from seeing her husband,

Today’s concert brings Clara and Robert

the composers together, contrasting three delicate miniatures by Clara with two more substantial works by her husband.

Robert had yearned to write an opera since his early life, and considered several subjects that would themselves go on to have successful musical incarnations – the legends of the Nibelung, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel, for example. Encouraged by Clara, he finally decided on the medieval story of Genevieve of Brabant. In this dark legend, Genevieve is left under the protection of the servant Golo while her husband, Siegfried, departs to fight in the Crusades. She must soon protect herself from Golo’s unwelcome advances, however, and when she spurns him, Golo ensures that the distant Siegfried hears lies about his wife’s apparent infidelity. Siegfried orders her execution, but the couple are reunited when Golo’s treachery is exposed.

Robert Schumann wrote his Genoveva Overture before he’d even finalised the scenario of the opera, and it quickly became a popular work in its own right, serving as a useful foretaste of the opera itself. That larger work was hardly a success at its 1850 premiere in Leipzig, however, surviving for only a handful of performances.

Nonetheless, the Overture remains one of Robert’s most popular orchestral works, and though it shares little of the music of the rest of the opera, it serves to outline the arc of its story. There’s tension right from the dissonant opening chord of its brooding opening, which moves into a stormier central section – complete with distant horn calls, possibly from the far-away Siegfried – before the music brightens into a brilliant C major and dashes towards its euphoric close.

The Three Romances are among the last pieces that Clara Schumann wrote, and were originally conceived for violin and piano.

They come from 1853, the year before Robert’s suicide attempt, but nonetheless a good period for the Schumann family: it brought their first meeting with Brahms, as well as an optimistic move to Düsseldorf, where they occupied a house large enough for Clara to practise and compose without disturbing her husband. She dedicated the Romances to their family friend Joseph Joachim, and performed them widely with him, including in front of King George V of Hanover, who was reportedly ‘completely ecstatic’ upon hearing them.

Today’s conductor, and SCO Conductor Emeritus, Joseph Swensen himself arranged the Romances for violin and orchestra, leaving the solo part unchanged, but, he says, also attempting to imagine how Clara herself might have played the original piano part, and the colours and textures that the great pianist and composer might have conjured.

Though brief, the Romances serve to demonstrate Clara’s natural gift for melody and her subtle use of harmony.

The first opens with a hint of gypsy pathos before a more energetic central section, its solo violin later duetting evocatively with the orchestra’s flute. The second is more wistful and has a richly ornamented melody, with a brighter central section in which the violin sparkles with trills and grace notes. The final Romance pits a slow-moving violin melody against a bubbling accompaniment with a prominent part for the orchestra’s clarinet.

The concert closes with Robert at his most effusive and optimistic. Many titled

Robert recorded in his diary that it “was received with such enthusiasm as I don’t think has been accorded any symphony since Beethoven”.

Robert Schumann

symphonies owe their names to canny publishers keen to hook prospective listeners or performers with ideas about a work’s subject matter. The First Symphony’s ‘Spring’ title, however, is all Robert’s own – it’s even written on the manuscript’s opening page – and according to Clara makes reference to the Frühlingsgedicht (or ‘Spring Poem’) by Adolf Böttger. Indeed, the fanfare that opens the work has long been associated with the poem’s closing lines – ‘O wende, wende deinen Lauf, Im Talle blüht der Frühling auf!’ (‘Oh turn, oh turn and change your course, Now in the valley blooms the spring!’) – and its rhythms fit perfectly.

Robert originally gave his four movements individual titles: first ‘The Beginning of Spring’, then ‘Evening’, followed by ‘Merry Playmates’ and finally ‘Spring in Full Bloom’.

He withdrew those titles before publication, however, perhaps concerned about an overliteral interpretation of his music. We may wonder, too, what Robert meant by ‘spring’ – perhaps the time of year, whose seasonal pleasures can certainly be discerned within the Symphony’s music, but perhaps also the advent of his long-yearned-for marriage to Clara, and the new beginnings that the union would represent for them personally and creatively.

The brass fanfare that opens the Symphony’s first movement returns again and again throughout the work as a motto theme, uniting all four of its movements. But it’s

Quite remarkably, Robert sketched the work in just four days, between 23 and 26 January 1841, just a few months after he and Clara had finally married.

The orchestration was complete by 20 February, and the Symphony was premiered on 31 March that same year,

immediately followed by a sudden eruption of turmoil and drama in the first movement’s slow introduction, as if a reminder that winter isn’t quite over. Nonetheless, the movement quickly moves on to a jollier, more bucolic faster main section, itself based on the fanfare motto theme. The tender second movement pits its soaring violin melody against all manner of intricate orchestral textures, before a harmonic shift sideways leads straight into the third movement, a somewhat gruff, grumpy scherzo, though with two brighter trio sections. Robert returns to his fanfare theme to bring his finale to a joyful conclusion – though the final movement is not without its drama in a brief spring storm, evoked by string tremolos in its central development section.

conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.

© David Kettle

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