Romance - The Piano Music of Clara Schumann review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 80

Kanneh-Mason/Royal Liverpool PO/Mathieson
(Decca)
Two centuries after her birth, this tribute to Schumann is a muscular argument for her music, which is influenced more by Chopin than her husband Robert

Clara Schumann was almost as precocious a composer as she was a pianist; her father Friedrich Wieck ensured she received composition lessons alongside her pianistic training, and among her earliest works was a piano concerto, which she began to write at the age of 13. By then, Robert Schumann was already renting a room in the Wieck household, and helped Clara complete what became the finale of the concerto; she then added the two much shorter movements that precede it, and gave the first performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1835.