Piano Addict Lara plays Clara and Robert

Robert Schumann’s declaration, “My Clara, what would I not do for love of you?,” serves as inspiration for the title of Lara Downes’ newest album, For Love of You. The album includes Robert’s Piano Concerto Op. 54, Clara’s Three Romances Op. 11, followed by Robert’s Fantasiestücke Op. 12. Lara chose these works to highlight Clara’s and Robert’s musical lives during the 3 years before they finally won their fight to marry in 1840. 

When Lara contacted me to see if I might share my thoughts about this album with you, I was excited to be asked and then my teacher wheels started turning. I imagined a listening assignment that might contrast how Clara and Robert composed. Instead, I discovered a kind of interplay and communion between the two. I always listen to an album before I read what the artist has to say about it and wow! Lara uses the words enmeshed and mutual offspring to describe the union of Clara’s and Robert’s musical selves in this From the Artist’s Bench video. 

Lara’s performances are intimate and conversational.  (You might also like to read my 2011 Interview with Lara). The details of the layers within the music are exquisite. Those movements that are powerful and sweeping are at the same time virtuosic and eloquent. Lara highlights the fiery, the intimate, the longing, the stubbornness, and the tenderness in the music of two musicians hammering out the nitty gritty details of a future life together.  

Actually, my musical mind went to an extremely surprising place after I had listened to Lara’s performances several times. Suddenly, That Would Be Enough from Hamilton popped in. Here is another couple hammering out their future together. And yet, the gender roles were reversed weren’t they? It was Clara who had the more in-demand public personality and who fought to keep her career even when married. 

I did not know Clara’s Opus 11 Romances before this. Just where have they been all my life? The second is conversational and questioning. I’m not sure that the conflict is resolved in the end either. The third is a tender, dainty waltz with echoes of Chopin. And, could the first truly be a barcarolle? I love the second motive with its quintessential Schumannesqe shape and ornament. But, wait. Which Schumann? Is it a chicken egg situation? Probably. 

Robert’s Concerto and Fantasiestücke are certainly staples of the piano repertoire. The day the CD arrived, we had just heard a bombastic and ultrafast version of the Concerto in the car. I was venting. OK, I was whining. My husband was rolling his eyes. Lara’s performance was a complete antidote. The interplay between soloist and orchestra never fragments the long lines or becomes annoyingly overblown. I appreciate the rhythmic drive and swing of the last movement which highlights the hope and joie de vivre in this music.  

It is not easy to connect multiple short pieces into a cohesive performance without losing the small details of each. Lara does this wonderfully with the eight pieces of the Fantasiestücke. Not only does each individual piece speak though the details within it but the pieces speak to each other in an interplay of passion and personality. Also, I’m a sucker for Robert’s fantasy worlds, stirring marches, and intimate codas and these absolutely do not disappoint. 

Want to know more? Here are a few books on Clara and other women composers.

  • Clara Schumann: Romantic Piano Music Vol. 2
  • Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music
  • Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music
  • Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman
  • Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman
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