Clara Schumann

Clara Wieck Schumann appeared in public at the age of nine and she remained in the public eye for the rest of her life. With her activities spanning over sixty years, she had a considerable influence on the piano scene as an international star, piano pedagogue and, finally, as a professor in 1878 at the newly founded Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main. The possibilities of music-making were not exhausted for her in piano-playing alone, but also included theoretical and practical knowledge about music. Thus singing and violin-playing were just as much a part of her education as was composing. Her early compositions were conceived as extensions of her own repertoire, and she emphasised the range of her musical profile as a virtuoso. In the 1840s, the confrontation with the requirements of various musical genres came increasingly to the fore. Nonetheless, the compositions written during her marriage were also intended for performance on the concert stage. Already as a young virtuoso, she was noted for playing music in all "styles", not merely her own pieces. She initially distinguished herself by being the first virtuoso, alongside Franz Liszt, to perform Beethoven sonatas in the concert hall beginning in 1837. Besides her renown as a Beethoven interpreter, she then became primarily known as an "authentic" representative of the so-called "Romantic School", i.e. the music of Chopin, Henselt, Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann. She later expanded her repertoire to include the piano works of Brahms. She controlled the reception of Robert Schumann's music not only through her performance policies, but also through her edition of his works in various forms, as well as the edition of her husband's biographical material. Beyond that, through her performance style, she first of all shaped a definite repertoire selection focussed on a canon of works from Bach and Scarlatti to Brahms. Secondly, she influenced her pupils through a certain attitude towards interpretation that was already designated in the 19th century as "faithfulness to the original". She was noted for exactitude of the text and an intensive preoccupation with the composer's intentions. Through her international tours, she especially made the works of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms known abroad. From the end of the 1870s onwards, a triad was formed by Clara Schumann in Frankfurt am Main, Johannes Brahms in Vienna and Joseph Joachim in Berlin. These three musicians were so powerful in their effect that their names, long after their deaths, remained synonymous for an attitude of conservative values steadfast in its orientation towards the "masterwork" and up in arms against the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. In contrast to this, the piano technique she taught seems to have been received as progressive, well into the twentieth century, by virtue of its expressive variety.