Hélène Grimaud - For Clara – Extended Edition
Hélène Grimaud - For Clara – Extended Edition
(Deutsche Grammophon, 2023)
French pianist Hélène Grimaud released For Clara this past September. The recording featured music inspired by Clara Schumann and included Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Johannes Brahms’ Op. 117 Intermezzi and Op. 32 songs. This Extended Edition adds Ms. Grimaud’s live performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.
For the uninitiated, Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms were thick as thieves in the mid-1850s. Brahms visited the Schumanns in Düsseldorf in October 1853 and was introduced with a letter from his benefactor, composer Joseph Joachim. Impressed with his talent, Schumann published reviews favorable to the young Brahms, leading to Brahm’s first publications. Following Schumann's attempted suicide and institutional confinement in February 1854 (where he died of pneumonia in 1856), Brahms moved to Düsseldorf to help support the Schumann, dealing with household business matters on Clara's behalf. The two remained close friends until she died in 1896. Brahms was to follow her the next year.
Ms. Grimaud gives a robust reading of the eight sections of Kreisleriana her articulation certain and tone management informed. She approaches Brahm’s Intermezzi from a position of larger rather than smaller. These are brief pieces dense with artistry and emotion. Artistry and emotion are also what Grimaud, in an empathic concert with baritone Konstantin Krimmel, brings to Brahms’ Neun Lieder und Gesänge (Nine Songs), Op. 32. Grimaud and Krimmel bring this lost leider cycle.
The new addition to this set, making it an “Extended Edition” is a performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 54. Grimaud performed with the Camerata Salzburg under the direction of Giovanni Guzzo. The two programmed this performance for the chamber orchestra. The performance is close, warm, and intimate. Grimaud’s grasp of Schumann and his deep Romanticism is solid: commanding in the first movement, introspectively playful in the second, and celebratory in the third. Grimaud’s extraordinary pianism and musical philosophy make this recording exceptional.