Clara Schumann | Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, Op 20 | Konstanze Eickhorst, piano
Clara Schumann | Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 20
Konstanze Eickhorst, piano
0:00 Theme
1:08 Variation I
2:00 Variation II
3:08 Variation III
4:17 Variation IV
5:12 Variation V
6:19 Variation VI
7:22 Variation VII
Clara Schumann wrote her piano variations on her husband’s theme in 1853, and gave the first performance herself on May 27, 1845, with an audience including Johannes Brahms. He was so inspired by her composition that he wrote his own set of variations to the same theme, used in the fourth movement of Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blatter, Op. 99. This work was to be one of Schumann’s last, with the increasing responsibility of her children and her husband’s declining health.
Clara Schumann gave the variations to her husband on his birthday with the dedication, “To my beloved husband on the 8th of June, 1853, this humble, renewed essay by his old Clara.
Marked “Ziemlich Langsam,” rather slow, Schumann’s piece begin with her husband’s theme, followed by seven variations. The theme remains clear throughout the piece, as well as its subdued nature. The first variation is a run of triplets in the bass with the theme clearly defined by the upper voices. The second variation’s semiquavers create a feeling of forward movement and the technical difficulties show what a commanding pianist Schumann herself was. The third variation is a return to the initial subdued theme’s character, with a rhythmic and slow, mournful movement to it. The fourth variation moves forward again with more triplet semiquavers in the right hand and the theme clearly present in the left. The fifth set of variations is more agitated, with left hand octaves over which the there is an insistent chordal restatement of the theme. The sixth variation is a beautiful canon of the theme in which Schumann’s unique sense of harmony is explored. The last variation expresses the theme with spread chords and delicate arpeggios, with a coda drifting off to silence with more arpeggios.
See available markets of this song at https://c0v3r.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/available-markets-impromptus-u%cc%88ber-ein-thema-von-clara-wieck-op-5-iv-live-by-robert-schumann/
Konstanze Eickhorst, piano
0:00 Theme
1:08 Variation I
2:00 Variation II
3:08 Variation III
4:17 Variation IV
5:12 Variation V
6:19 Variation VI
7:22 Variation VII
Clara Schumann wrote her piano variations on her husband’s theme in 1853, and gave the first performance herself on May 27, 1845, with an audience including Johannes Brahms. He was so inspired by her composition that he wrote his own set of variations to the same theme, used in the fourth movement of Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blatter, Op. 99. This work was to be one of Schumann’s last, with the increasing responsibility of her children and her husband’s declining health.
Clara Schumann gave the variations to her husband on his birthday with the dedication, “To my beloved husband on the 8th of June, 1853, this humble, renewed essay by his old Clara.
Marked “Ziemlich Langsam,” rather slow, Schumann’s piece begin with her husband’s theme, followed by seven variations. The theme remains clear throughout the piece, as well as its subdued nature. The first variation is a run of triplets in the bass with the theme clearly defined by the upper voices. The second variation’s semiquavers create a feeling of forward movement and the technical difficulties show what a commanding pianist Schumann herself was. The third variation is a return to the initial subdued theme’s character, with a rhythmic and slow, mournful movement to it. The fourth variation moves forward again with more triplet semiquavers in the right hand and the theme clearly present in the left. The fifth set of variations is more agitated, with left hand octaves over which the there is an insistent chordal restatement of the theme. The sixth variation is a beautiful canon of the theme in which Schumann’s unique sense of harmony is explored. The last variation expresses the theme with spread chords and delicate arpeggios, with a coda drifting off to silence with more arpeggios.
See available markets of this song at https://c0v3r.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/available-markets-impromptus-u%cc%88ber-ein-thema-von-clara-wieck-op-5-iv-live-by-robert-schumann/
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