Wigmore Hall, LondonAll 29 of the composer and pianist’s songs were brought to life in polished performances by the Academy Song Circle, but less might have been more on this occasion
Unlike Alma Schindler, who was forced to give up all her ambitions to compose when she married Gustav Mahler, Robert Schumann positively encouraged his wife Clara to continue writing
music after their marriage in 1840. The bicentenary celebrations of Clara Schumann’s birth last year focused on her own works as well as on her influence as one of the most important pianists of the 19th century, and chances to hear her music look likely to continue – the Academy Song Circle’s survey of her songs, 29 of them, was one of three events in
London in the last week of January featuring her music.
Apart from four settings composed when she was a teenager, all of Schumann’s songs date from the 1840s and 50s – in the last 40 years of her life, after Robert’s death in 1856, she abandoned composition altogether. But unlike her piano music, which seems to have been influenced more by Chopin than by her husband, Clara’s songs are much closer to Robert’s, both harmonically and in the rich detail of their piano writing. Even one of the earliest songs, Walzer, from 1833, includes an unmistakable reference to a theme from his Op 2, Papillons.