History offers many examples of women suppressing their creativity to support their husband’s: in music, Alma Mahler is probably the most famous. Clara Schumann doesn’t quite fit the category.
Yes, she supported and cared for husband Robert, not least through his prolonged mental disarray; she also bore eight children by him, but she also had a career as piano virtuoso, teacher and, perhaps less successfully, composer.
Last year marked the bicentenary of her birth. Yesterday, Academy Song Circle performed all 30 of Clara’s songs. If the concert demonstrated that she didn’t have the melodic gift of, say, Schubert, her talent was real and personal. As a formidable pianist herself, she made sure that the piano was an equal partner in the drama of each piece.
Song Circle brings together emerging talent from the Royal Academy of Music: here, pianists Benjamin Mead and Julia Klimek, soprano Samantha Quillish, mezzo Yuki Akimoto, tenor Robert Forrest and baritone Michael Ronan.
Each played their part, in rotation, everyone fully in Clara’s style, the singers’ German sounding properly idiomatic. Klimek proved the more flamboyant pianist, while Ronan revealed a commanding voice and stage presence. For each of the performers, there is clearly more to come, but so much is already in place.
