Mo-Ah Kim's album, Clara Wieck Schumann: Art of Preluding, and Isata Kanneh-Mason's Romance – The Piano Music of Clara Schumann, with Jonathan Aasgaard and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, form part of a welcome re-appreciation of Clara Schumann's work as performer, composer and educator.Footnote 1 These discs contribute richly to the serious, sustained effort – spurred on by the two-hundredth anniversary of Schumann's birth in September 2019 – to expand our understanding of her work through dialogues across performance, musicology and pedagogy. This allows us to learn more about Clara Schumann and to understand the vital role she played in the development of pianism, with its multifaceted richness, in European classical music.
Clara Schumann was the daughter of Friedrich Wieck (1785–1873, originally a household tutor who, despite being mostly self-taught in music,Footnote 2 developed a highly sophisticated pedagogical system for teaching piano), and Marianne Wieck, née Tromlitz (1797–1872, a soprano soloist and pianist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus). We cannot determine how much Marianne Wieck's skills in both areas of piano and singing might have influenced the young Clara, as the Wiecks divorced when she was only four and a half years old, and – in accordance with Saxon law – her father became her sole legal guardian from when she was five.Footnote 3 However, we do know that the importance of piano tone, especially the concept of ‘singing tone’, remained with Schumann throughout her performing career and became a prominent part of her teaching methodology.
Central to Clara's Schumann's approach to the piano – and particularly relevant to the albums under consideration here – is the emphasis that Friedrich Wieck placed on the quality of piano tone, in contradistinction to an approach based on vacuous virtuosity, where tone risks being relegated to secondary importance.Footnote 4 Wieck returned frequently to the significance of tone in his book Clavier und Gesang und andere musikpädagogische Schriften (published in English as Piano and Song / How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of Musical Performances).Footnote 5 He questioned the use of knowing how to read music ‘to the piano-learner, if he has no touch, no tone on the piano-forte’.Footnote 6 He asserted how, with his teaching method, he ‘taught a correct, light touch of the keys from the fingers’.Footnote 7 And he made sure to impress upon his reader the connection between singing and playing the piano: ‘I have also paid great attention to the art of singing, as a necessary foundation for piano-playing’.Footnote 8 This is evidenced in Wieck's Clavier und Gesang where the following instructions have a particular pertinence for our understanding of Schumann's approach to preluding:
Before you perform a piece, play a few suitable chords, and a few appropriate passages or scales up and down (but play no stupid trash, such as I have heard from many virtuosos), in order to try whether the condition of the instrument presents any unexpected difficulties. Try carefully also the unavoidable pedal. A creaking, rattling, grating pedal is a frightful annoyance.Footnote 9
Of equal importance to Friedrich Wieck were a number of holistic approaches to piano pedagogy: the early development of the ability to memorize and to transpose;Footnote 10 an early approach to piano that was not reliant on reading music but instead was based on aural, visual, and tactile input;Footnote 11 a constant exposure to musical performances by having his daughter Clara regularly attend ‘orchestral and chamber music concerts as well as productions of drama and opera’;Footnote 12 the development of a rounded musicality with Clara's training including ‘lessons not only in piano, but also in voice, violin, improvisation, theory, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration’;Footnote 13 and a staunch refusal to let his students spend time on the ‘so-called feminine arts’. In fact, ‘all his piano pupils were advised against sewing, knitting or crocheting’.Footnote 14
The album Clara Wieck Schumann: Art of Preluding, building on Mo-Ah Kim's DMA dissertation, is exemplary of recent work that combines research and performance.Footnote 15 Kim observes that Schumann likely studied Czerny's A Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on the Pianoforte, Op. 200, in which Czerny categorizes ‘three “Fantasieren (“Improvisieren”) types’: 1) a prelude to be performed before the beginning of a piece, ‘Preludien (‘Vorspiele’) vor Anfang eines Stückes’; 2) cadenzas and fermatas in the midst of a piece ‘in der Mitte eines Stückes’; and 3) full-fledged fantasy-like improvisation ‘Fantasieren’ (‘Improvisieren’).Footnote 16 Czerny further distinguishes between two types of preludes:
First [Preludes and Short Fantasies before the Beginning of a Piece to Be Performed], quite short, as though through only a few chords, runs, passagework and transitional materials, one were trying out the instrument, warming up the fingers or arousing the attention of the listeners. These must conclude with the complete chord of the principal key of the work to be performed. Second, [Preludes of a Longer and More Elaborated Type], just like an introduction belonging to the following piece; therefore, even thematic materials from the latter can be introduced therein. A prelude such as this, which already allows for some modulation, must conclude with a cadence on the seventh-chord of the dominant of the following piece and, by that token, become connected with it.Footnote 17
Clara Schumann’s half-sister Marie Wieck – herself an accomplished pianist, singer, composer, and educator – published a collection of etudes by Friedrich Wieck, wherein she points out that ‘at the beginning, the exercises are to be played very calmly and with a soft touch: only after long and sustained study should the tempo gradually be accelerated to the point of greatest velocity. The order [of the exercises] should be determined by the teacher according to the individuality of the student’.Footnote 18 Such advice reveals that while ‘greatest velocity’ was a necessary goal, at no point should tone be sacrificed for the sake of speed alone. This concern with quality of tone was to remain a constant for Schumann as performer and as educator.
Clara Schumann embraced and further developed these distinct strategies, absorbing them into her own playing and adapting them for her teaching studio. As recent scholarship has shown, Schumann was not only a touring virtuoso performer and a serious, dedicated composer, but also a committed pedagogue who helped define many of the teaching strategies that are still in use today in European classical music. In addition, through her performances of such composers as Chopin, Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, Schumann was instrumental in developing the canon of European classical music.Footnote 19
From the vantage point of Clara Schumann's bicentenary in 2019, Mo-Ah Kim and Isata Kanneh-Mason occupy an important place in a lineage of pianism that can be traced both backward from Clara Schumann – to the golden age of pianism and improvisation of the early nineteenth century – and forward from Clara Schumann – through the twentieth century, to the recordings under consideration in this review and beyond. Earlier pedagogical resources of which Schumann was aware include Friedrich Wieck's pedagogical musings and etudes,Footnote 20 Czerny's numerous books of etudes, exercises and methods for piano, and Robert Schumann's piano etudes for children.Footnote 21 While these and numerous other composers and educators actively published material for a growing market of avid consumers of piano literature,Footnote 22 Schumann declined to publish any preludes or etudes/exercises in her lifetime. Her reluctance to do so is doubly aggravating for both pedagogues and performers, as it limits our ability to understand her preluding approach to its full creative and pedagogical extent. The lack that results from the reluctance to publish these pedagogical materials – much like her reluctance to embrace the role of composerFootnote 23 – also speaks to the sexism of Clara Schumann's age which dictated that a woman ought not to publish such material,Footnote 24 thereby depriving later pianists of it. Kim's album is thus a welcome contribution to the process of developing a deeper, more detailed understanding of the talent and innovative genius of Clara Schumann.
Recent recordings that foreground Schumann's contribution to Western concert music include Domenico Codispoti's Clara Wieck Schumann: Piano Works Footnote 25 and Ragna Schirmer's Clara Schumann: Piano Trio and Concerto,Footnote 26 among others.Footnote 27 In Clara Wieck Schumann: Art of Preluding, Kim focuses on the preludes and exercises that Clara Schumann transcribed for posterity at the insistence of her daughters. Kim delineates the scope of her work as follows:
The fundamental goal of this document is a revival of preluding. My aim is not to offer aesthetic judgements of the individual preludes preserved through manuscripts and recordings, but rather to advocate for increased understanding of the role of preluding in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century programs and to provide suggestions for pianists interested in reinvigorating this practice in their own performances. Although the term revival can be rendered in various ways, my intention is to carry this tradition of preluding not only in scholarship but also in applying it to performance.Footnote 28
To accomplish this, Kim set out to record all the written exercises and preludes by Schumann. Musically speaking, the exercises are fairly straightforward – geared towards the development of arpeggio and broken chord facility at the keyboard. Kim performs them with accomplished speed without any sacrifice of tone, a technique entirely in keeping with that instilled in the young Clara Wieck by her father. The preludes showcase a more inventive and creative approach, with Schumann revealing her notable command of harmony and chromaticism, as well as her ability to generate introductory material for the pieces that were to follow the preludes in performance. Kim vividly demonstrates the technical and harmonic range of the preludes, her consummate command of the material highlighting both its compositional and performative qualities. Also included in the album are two pieces from Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 – I. ‘Des Abends’ and VII. ‘Traumes Wirren’, as well as Chopin's Impromptu No. 1 in A-Flat Major, Op. 29, and the Rondo section from Weber's Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 24. This historically motivated choice draws attention to Schumann's practice of using the preludes to connect the separate works in the concert programme.Footnote 29 Two of Schumann's simpler preludes for students (‘Einfache Praeludien für Schüler’), were recorded in their original form, but have also been arranged by Kim to demonstrate how to derive a fully-fleshed prelude from a harmonic progression originally outlined in basic block chords.
Kim's album (as with her richly informative dissertation on preluding in the long nineteenth century) is a vital addition to the growing catalogue of recorded works by Clara Schumann. Whether Kim's stated goal of generating a revival of preluding within the macrocosm of classical music will come to fruition remains to be seen.Footnote 30 This album certainly sets a high standard for those who decide to pursue that goal.
Isata Kanneh-Mason's Romance – The Piano Music of Clara Schumann, provides a wonderful overview of the compositional prowess and pianistic virtuosity of Clara Schumann. Through her wide-ranging selection of pieces on this album – namely the Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7, 3 Romances, Op. 11, the Piano Sonata in G Minor, and the 3 Romances, Op. 22 (with Elena Urioste on violin), as well as the two Robert Schumann pieces, including ‘Widmung’, from Myrthen (Op. 25/1), and ‘Mondnacht’, from the Liederkreis (Op. 39/5), both arranged by Clara Schumann – Kanneh-Mason exhibits a deep command of the much-acclaimed ‘singing tone’ that Clara Schumann so emphasized in her teaching. Kanneh-Mason is a rising star in the classical world, with a series of prizes, achievements and awards supporting that recognition. She received an undergraduate degree from and continues to study at The Royal Academy of Music, under the tutelage of Carole Presland (Presland is part of a lineage of pianists and piano educators that can be traced back to Arthur Schnabel, through Renna Kellaway and Franz Osborn, and has worked extensively with András Schiff). While Kanneh-Mason clearly has her own mature voice, her skilful ability to animate inner voices is reminiscent of the playing of András Schiff. This can be heard throughout the whole album, but it is demonstrated with particular sophistication in the Op. 11 Romances and the Piano Sonata in G Minor.
There are clear differences in the audio quality of these two albums. Kanneh-Mason's album is a Decca release, with the excellent audio quality associated with that label. The instrument balance in this album is very piano-centric and, though this is apt for the Piano Concerto, it seems a little too much in Op. 22, with the violin a little too far back in the mix. In Kim's album, two main issues stand out. First, the microphone placement leads to the mix occasionally featuring too much damper pedal noise, especially in sections that require fast pedalling. Secondly, the overall mix tends to lean toward being overly bright at times, with the 1kHz range and above occasionally a little too prominent. Kim’s playing more than makes up for these audio issues, however, and these technical aspects should not be an encumbrance for most listeners.
Both of these albums are to be highly recommended not only for the exquisite pianism, but also for how they help to better understand Clara Schumann as composer, improviser and performer.
