The Life and Music of Clara Schumann

Rachmaninoff's relationship with the symphony as a genre was famously complicated. The catastrophic premiere of his First Symphony is legendary: a badly prepared orchestra, a possibly drunk conductor, and critics who were ready to plunge a knife into the young composer's self-con ...  Show more

When the great pianist and composer Frederic Chopin decided to write a piano sonata in 1837, fashions had turned against the genre itself. Perhaps it was a feeling that Beethoven had essentially "finished" the genre, or perhaps it was a sense that a non-Germanic composer couldn't ...  Show more

It’s time to delve into the tale of Clara Schumann, the phenomenally gifted composer who was, in many ways, The Greatest Schumann. Each episode is also accompanied by a playlist in Apple Music – you can find those here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/curator/classic-fm/1211395150 Cl ...  Show more

Highlights from the music of composer Robert Schumann, including excerpts from the piano concerto, Kinderszenen, the Piano Quintet, the Symphony #3 and Arabeske. Performers include: Arthur Rubinstein , Arturo Toscanini, Albert Cortot and Myra Hess. 

This is a recording of the third movement/section of Schumann's masterpiece, Fantasy in C. This movement is one of my all-time favorite works in the piano literature. Edited by his wife, Clara, this work was originally dedicated to Franz Liszt, although later editions did not inc ...  Show more