Biography (read more)
Clara Josephine Schumann, née Wieck, was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819. Both her parents were pianists and piano teachers — her mother Mariane was also a singer — and she was trained from childhood by her father, Friedrich Wieck. A child prodigy, she began touring at the age of eleven and found success in Paris and Vienna among other cities.
She married the composer Robert Schumann on 12 September 1840, and the couple had eight children. Together they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him throughout their lives. After Robert Schumann’s early death she continued to tour Europe for decades, frequently appearing with the violinist Joseph Joachim and other chamber musicians, and she edited her husband’s work for publication.
From 1878 she taught at Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium in Frankfurt, where she attracted students from abroad and became an influential piano educator. She died in Frankfurt on 20 May 1896 and was buried in Bonn beside her husband.
Schumann’s concert career spanned sixty-one years, and over that time she changed the format and repertoire of the piano recital itself, lessening the importance of purely virtuosic display. She gave the public premieres of many works by her husband and by Brahms, and is regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era.
As a composer she wrote solo piano pieces, a piano concerto, chamber music, choral works and songs. Her solo piano music is the part of that output most often recorded, and it is the basis of the complete-works recording collected here.
Sources: