BY MARK BOSCH, LEAD CRITIC
On September 13 this year, Clara Schumann is turning 200. A day later (which, conveniently, is a Saturday), a bunch of young Sydney musicians will assemble to celebrate the life and music of this greatly talented but all-too-underperformed composer.
Yours truly will have the pleasure of performing in Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 (1846), which opens the Modest Orchestra’s celebration at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I’m privileged to play an instrument many composers use to communicate grief, because Clara had a difficult life — and the violin writing in her piano trio really attests to that.
I’m also privileged to have spoken to Katarina Grobler, who has a much more important role in the upcoming program. She’s no less than its director and the soloist of its centrepiece: Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7 (1833–35).
We spoke about Clara’s life as a composer, as a woman, and as someone who’s just really worth celebrating in spite of the all-too-male, pale, and stale status quo of Australian classical music presentation.
Hi Katarina!
Hi Mark!
So, Clara Schumann is turning 200 this month. You’ve planned a birthday celebration alongside Modest Orchestra’s artistic director Panagiotis Karamanos. What drew you to this collaboration?
I’d been thinking of creating an event for Clara Schumann’s 200th birthday, inspired by other celebrations happening around the world. One of the pieces I thought would be crucial to have in the program was her major work — the Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7. So the first step was to find an orchestra willing to play it with me!
Since Panagiotis and I have been friends for a while, I decided to ask him, and he was immediately on board with the idea. Since then, we’ve been combining our creative ideas to produce something we think is going to be really exciting!
Like me, you’re interested in what it looks like when young people direct (the course of) classical music. How do you perceive the status quo in Australian classical music, and how have you tried to do things differently with this concert?
Classical music has a stigma of elitism and being reserved for only certain members of society — namely, if you look at the demographic at many concerts, people over the age of 50.
Whenever I talk with friends who have never seen live classical music, I hear a lot about their being intimidated by the environment they expect to encounter — they don’t know what to wear, they don’t know the social cues — and this isolates and discourages younger audiences from attending concerts.
We hope our event can be more accessible, fun, and engaging for a wider audience. For this celebration, nobody needs to know the repertoire, or have any assumed knowledge, because we’ll have a host introducing the pieces and speaking about Clara’s life. And, since it’s a birthday celebration, all audience members can also enjoy a complimentary slice of cake!
These are some ways we hope to break down the usually all-too-mechanical audience-performer relationship, and create a better connection between the audience and the artists. This inclusiveness is really important for sharing classical music, particularly music from the Romantic period, which can carry so many extramusical connotations.
I’ll be playing in the orchestra when you take to the stage on piano. How would you describe the interaction between yourself as soloist, and the orchestral musicians in the concerto?
Interestingly enough, Robert Schumann actually orchestrated the concerto for Clara after she completed the solo part, and there are some absolutely beautiful interactions which occur between the orchestra and the piano!
I’m really excited to be playing with Modest Orchestra, especially because many of my friends and colleagues are in the ensemble. It’s a really special experience to be able to share the stage with people who you connect with both in and outside of music, which is a rare occurrence for many soloists who perform regularly with orchestras.
I think this definitely adds an extra layer of joy to the performance experience, and makes it all the more memorable!
Clara Schumann led a remarkable and difficult life, which included a lawsuit against her overbearing father, caring for eight children and one perennially sick Robert; along with four of her children she outlived, and nurturing a much-sensationalised relationship with the younger Johannes Brahms. She lived in a time when women composers were almost completely silenced by men — a long and lamentable part of music history that still continues. One blogger has called her a “proto-feminist heroine”. Tell me about your attachment to Clara.
Clara has been idolised as a feminist figure in classical music, but in fact I’m not sure she would have appreciated that association, either then or now; she certainly wasn’t a feminist in the modern sense of the word. After she and Robert were married, she wrote about how she needed to accept not being allowed to practise, because Robert had to compose in silence, and she needed to do what would make Robert happy. She also wrote:
“I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”
Even though I am deeply inspired by her achievements, to portray her as a “feminist heroine” would be to misrepresent her identity to some extent, in my opinion. She lived in difficult times and her life was definitely tragic — she lost her husband in her 30s, was a single mother, like you mentioned — but from what I’ve read of her, she never fought through these tragedies in the name of women’s rights. Rather, she aimed for artistic excellence and her own satisfaction.
Perhaps it’s in her resilience of these tragedies that she can be read as a feminist. Speaking of resilience, what have been the unique challenges for you learning the centrepiece of the program, Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7?
Clara was very technically skilled. Quite a bit of the concerto, particularly the final movement, is at times very awkward and texturally dense. Like most of her other pieces, the concerto was composed for herself to perform, so she could obviously play it really well, including the tenths, which there are a lot of. I can’t reach a tenth, so I’ve pretty often had to ask myself, “how should I revoice this? What strategy can I use to play this?”.
In saying that, it’s a really beautiful piece, especially the stunning second movement which features a cello solo. She started writing it when she was 13, which is outstanding, and which means there are plenty of Chopin-like clichés that are fun to play with.
Nothing wrong with a good cliché! Anyway, thanks for speaking with me, Katarina! Anything else you’d like to share with our lovely readers?
If you don’t know anything about Clara Schumann, come to this concert! I’m really excited about its educational element; I really want people to come away with a knowledge of a woman composer who is rarely programmed these days — even though she was, and is, a really important staple of the Romantic period.
See Clara Schumann’s 200th Anniversary Concert with Katarina Grobler and the Modest Orchestra (feat. our very own Mark Bosch), at 7pm September 14 in Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Images supplied. Note: this interview has been transcribed and edited for clarity.
