Romance: The Piano Music of Clara Schumann (2019)

performed by Elena Urioste (violin), Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano), Jonathan Aasgaard (cello), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Holly Mathieson (conductor)
composed by Clara Wieck Schumann, Robert Schumann

The Kanneh-Mason family has a website covering all seven siblings, plus a piano trio, who are active musically. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has gotten the headlines with his appearance at the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle wedding, but now comes older sister Isata Kanneh-Mason, elegant indeed in an off-the-shoulder African dress. She deserves credit for choosing an off-the-beaten-path program for her debut: a recital of Clara Schumann's piano music. These pieces are played more often than they used to be, but most of them, ... Read More

The Kanneh-Mason family has a website covering all seven siblings, plus a piano trio, who are active musically. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has gotten the headlines with his appearance at the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle wedding, but now comes older sister Isata Kanneh-Mason, elegant indeed in an off-the-shoulder African dress. She deserves credit for choosing an off-the-beaten-path program for her debut: a recital of Clara Schumann's piano music. These pieces are played more often than they used to be, but most of them, especially the concluding Piano Sonata in G minor that was not published until 1991, still qualify as novel. Kanneh-Mason takes the works chronologically, which has the virtue of showing Schumann's compositional development but the disadvantage of leading with the weakest suit, the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7, which the composer wrote in her teens. It's a precocious and at times clever work, but it is no match for Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, and the... Read Less