Piano Concerto in A Minor

To get the measure of this one and only piano concerto by Clara Schumann, you have to imagine the premiere—with Felix Mendelssohn conducting and Clara herself at the keyboard, storming her way through the long, demanding final movement as a captivated audience, in 1835 Leipzig, watched with amazement. She was just 16. Much of the music had been written at an even younger age. And to call her a prodigy would have been understatement: she was on the threshold of a performing career that would establish her among the giants of 19th-century pianism and endure for more than 60 years, though leaving her little time to compose. When she did, it was almost always music that involved a piano, for herself to play. So this concerto signalled how her life would pan out. Written in three movements linked by bridging passages (an innovation for the time), the opening “Allegro” is the least successful: Chopin-esque and slightly thin. But the following “Romanze” has a heartfelt melody that would later inspire Brahms. And a portentous drum roll announces the "Finale", whose grand scale betrays the fact that it was originally conceived as a standalone piece.