Soirées musicales

Having started out as a child prodigy pianist, Clara Wieck (later Schumann, after she married Robert) was celebrated across Europe by her mid-teens. Her Soirées Musicales is a set of six solo piano pieces written when she was 16 and 17 and published in 1836. Full of character and imagination, they also display influences from Chopin and Mendelssohn. First, the “Toccatina” presents a brilliant, ingeniously rhythmic opening theme and a contrasting, lyrical second idea. Next comes the “Notturno”, which Robert Schumann quoted in the last of his Novelletten Op. 21; Robert and Clara, kept apart by Clara’s father, finally married in 1841, but even in the 1830s they often shared musical ideas—mostly Robert borrowing from Clara. No. 3 is a Chopinesque “Mazurka” with intricately embellished melodic lines, plus a drone bass in its middle section. The “Ballade”, No. 4, unfurls an implicitly poetic narrative, its highlight an especially dramatic middle section. Next comes a forthright G major “Mazurka”; Robert again borrowed an idea from it, this time to launch his Davidsbündlertänze. The “Polonaise” finally rounds off the set with flags flying.