Interview, Beatrice Rana on Clara & Robert Schumann

Until the mid-2000s, you could count commercial recordings of Clara Schumann's piano concerto (which she composed and premiered as Clara Wieck when still in her early teens) on one hand - the past few years, however, have seen an upswing in appreciation of the work itself and its composer in general, with Isata Kanneh-Mason, Barry Wordsworth and Gabriela Montero among those who've recently championed the concerto on disc. Last week the Italian pianist Beatrice Rana entered the conversation with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézet-Séguin on Warner, coupling the work with Robert's concerto (also premiered by Clara) from 1845.

In the run-up to the release of the recording, Beatrice spoke to me about her long-standing affinity with both composers, why she feels that Clara's music (and the radical quality of the concerto in particular) still isn't afforded the recognition which it deserves, and how the 'beautiful, respectful and open' communication between the Schumanns 'brought out the best in both of them'...

You obviously adore Clara Schumann’s music - when did you first fall under her spell?

In a way she’s always been a part of my life, because I’ve adored Robert’s compositions for as long as I can remember – his concerto was one of my favourites as a child, so I started reading about him when I was quite young and of course as soon as you start to read about him you also read about her. It’s always fascinated me that Clara basically invented my job! She was giving concerts and touring everywhere from a young age, and somehow I always felt that her figure was very close to me, even more so than Robert.

It still blows my mind to think that this concerto was written by a fourteen-year-old girl. The first performance was with her at the piano and Mendelssohn conducting – can you imagine going back in time to attend that concert?! I hope that our astonishment comes across, because we were so enthusiastic about the piece; we were also lucky enough to perform it together quite a few times before the actual recording, and it was absolutely fantastic to grow with this concerto and to share our love for it.

And despite the fact that she was so young when she composed the concerto, this is no apprentice-piece - she’s already experimenting with form, structure and instrumentation rather than painting by numbers, as it were…

Absolutely. I think that a lot of misunderstandings about Clara still persist, because we always think of her in relation to Robert and in terms of her function in his life - this concerto is the perfect evidence that we need to consider her as an independent figure, because she wrote it before the two of them were married or even together as a couple.

With this concerto we can really see what kind of musician and thinker she was in her own right, and there are so many innovations which people think happened later in the history of music that actually happened for the first time in this piece. Every time we think of a piano concerto that’s through-composed without interruptions, we think of Liszt; every time we think of a piano concerto with a cello solo, we think of Schumann or Brahms 2…When I started to practice this concerto and I saw that cello solo in the second movement my first thought was ‘Oh, it’s just like Robert’s concerto’...then I realised that Clara’s was written first!

In many respects it’s a very extreme concerto. She comes across as someone whose imagination was free from any kind of limits, and this concerto is without limits in terms of the virtuosity in the piano-writing and the experimentations with form and structure - just the idea of having a Romance for cello and piano right after the first movement is quite radical.

Clara inspired an entire generation of musicians, and it’s my hope that she’ll continue to influence even more nowadays as we work to put things in perspective and appreciate just how daring it was to write a concerto with so many groundbreaking features.

Speaking of the virtuosity of the piano writing, how much does the solo part tell us about her own particular technical strengths?

A great deal! With all of these composers who were first of all great pianists, it’s natural that their own virtuosity comes across strongly in their compositions - it happens with Liszt, it happens with Chopin, and it happens with Clara. This concerto was like a visiting-card for her: she wrote and performed it to show off her pianistic abilities, exactly as Chopin was doing with his concerti around the same time. You can clearly see what kind of approach to the keyboard she had, what she found technically easy – I’m sure that wide jumps were no problem for her, because the concerto is absolutely full of them and it makes the pianist’s life very complicated!

Did those pianistic abilities also influence Robert’s approach to writing for the instrument later on?

For sure – pretty much every piano composition by Robert was basically inspired by Clara’s playing. Clara was a great pianist who was writing for herself, but we all know that Robert had destroyed his hands with all sorts of crazy technical experiments, so what he was writing for the piano was meant to be under Clara’s hands. Specifically thinking of the concerto, I know that there are certain passages that he wrote in a certain way, and then when Clara saw it she asked him to add things and change details, so it was really a collaboration.

Clara was just nine and Robert eighteen when they first met - in the light of all the recent discussion on social media about problematic age-gaps between couples, is that something that gives you pause for thought?

Some people make a hobby of manufacturing more drama than is actually there - and I see plenty of toxic relationships between people who are the same age! Certainly the relationship was born in a difficult setting, because Robert was a student of Clara’s father and the match wasn’t an obvious one from her family’s point of view - but everything I’ve read in their marriage diaries suggests that it was a very beautiful relationship and actually a very healthy one.

Clara’s father was strongly opposed to the union, but the day she turned 21 (the age of majority) she got married to Robert, who gave this diary to her as a wedding-present. In the first page he writes ‘This is our diary, where we will write to each about what we liked and didn’t like each week’: Clara would take one week and Robert the next, which struck me as such a lovely, open way to communicate. I grew up reading these diaries, and it was so beautiful to see the politeness and respect with which they treated one another: even the hardest criticism is phrased in such a delicate and sensitive way.

Liszt's transcription of Widmung was a lovely way to link these two people on the CD. I think it’s quite clear that I adore this couple (!), but I also adore the kind of love that they had for each other and this powerful relationship that brought out the best in both of them. Plus it’s just a wonderful piece!

Liszt's personal brand of virtuosity was markedly different from Clara’s - did the two of them appreciate one another’s artistry, or were there reservations on either part?

There are some diary entries which indicate that she certainly had reservations about him - as did Brahms, who actually fell asleep when Liszt was playing! But Liszt was a great admirer of hers, and dedicates full pages of incredible words to her. He seems to have had that sort of supremely open-minded personality which is capable of seeing the beauty in very different people - and as you say Clara and Liszt were very different!

There’s an especially moving passage where he’s reflecting on the concept of virtuosity and what it means to him, because at that time being a ‘virtuoso’ was often seen as inferior to being a ‘musician': he explains why that’s not true, and goes on to describe why Clara is one of the greatest virtuosos that he has ever listened to. He gives a beautiful description of how her virtuosity was always placed at the service of the music and how enlightening her interpretations were, so it’s quite interesting to read that alongside her writings about him!

How much of Clara’s music have you explored beyond the concerto?

I have a chamber music festival in Southern Italy, and four years ago I dedicated a whole concert to Clara where we played all of her chamber music. It was a bit of a strange trajectory, because basically she stopped composing when she got married - the only composition that we have from afterwards is the Piano Trio, and I always wondered how she would have developed in a different setting…

It’s already astonishing what she did at that time: she had eight kids and still she was travelling around Europe giving concerts, which even nowadays looks like a massive accomplishment! I absolutely adore playing her pieces, but I can’t help thinking about what we might have today if she’d had more freedom to compose. Given what’s already there in the concerto, I think we would have some very interesting things from her if she’d had more opportunities to write for orchestra in particular…

You have performances of Robert’s concerto coming up in Washington around the launch of the album, and mentioned that you performed Clara’s concerto several times in the run-up to the recording-sessions - do you feel that audiences respond differently to the two works in concert?

When you play Robert’s concerto most of the audience arrives in the concert-hall with expectations, but with Clara not so many people know the piece and so they come with no preconceptions. I always sense that the audience has a very sincere enthusiasm for the music when I perform this concerto, which is just beautiful! It has a very powerful impact in concert - and I hope we’ve managed to replicate some of that on the recording, because every time I’ve played it live I felt a very strong connection with the audience, and from the audience to Clara.