Romance—The Piano Music of Clara Schumann—Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano; Elena Urioste, violin; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Holly Mathieson (Decca 4850020)
This July release from Decca anticipated the bicentennial of Clara Wieck Schumann in September, and its debut on WCLV this month qualifies as “better late than never.” Isata Kanneh-Mason’s passionate advocacy of this music earned an Editor’s Choice designation in the August 2019 Gramophone Magazine. The program starts with Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, begun when she was 13 years old, premiered at the Leipzig Gewandhaus when she was 16 with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. The last piece on the disc, the Sonata in G minor, was only discovered in full in the 1990s and it is a major find. In between are the Opus 11 Romances for solo piano, the Op 22 Romances for violin & piano, and two piano transcriptions by Clara of two famous songs by her husband Robert. When asked if Clara Schumann is a lost genius, Isata Kanneh-Mason said, “She’s not lost, but I think she needed to be rediscovered.” (Note: link sends you to the Presto Classical webpage for this album.)