Johannes Brahms and husband and wife Robert and Clara Schumann were pianist-composers whose lives intimately intertwined in 19th-century Germany. Clara’s constant support of Robert throughout his career and mental illness often overshadows her own dazzling talent as a major composer. Brahms was a close friend to both, and comforted Clara after her husband’s death. This fascinating release explores these close connections with fresh and warmly recorded performances of Robert Schumann and Brahms’ First Symphonies, alongside Clara’s Piano Concerto. Pianist Gabriela Montero, superb in the concerto, offers her own musical thoughts with a set of beautiful improvisations inspired by Clara—a touching link to the present day.

Composed soon after his 30th birthday, Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1 in D minor (Op. 49) is one of the composer’s greatest chamber music compositions… a fine and trenchant work, revealing his genius at getting the utmost definition and detail from a small group of instruments. Clara Schumann’s Op. 17 Piano Trio in G minor elegantly shows off her own admired facility at the keyboard as well as her gift for composing music that shows no little originality and a charm of melody which is all her own.
From the beginning of what was to prove to be his late period, Robert Schumann’s F major Second Piano Trio (Op. 80) moves from episodes of intense melancholy to Spring-fresh lightness to conclude with an engrossing discussion between all three instruments. Here is Schumann at his most endearingly human, the quintessence of Romanticism from a demonstrably original great composer. © SOMM Recordings