Yaara Tal - Love? Homage to Clara Schumann (2019) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Pianist Yaara Tal celebrates with her new album "Love? Homage to Clara Schumann" the 200th birthday (September 13th 2019) of the composer and piano virtuoso Clara Schumann (1819 – 1896). Clara Schumann was one of the most important musicians of the 19th century. In her honor, Yaara Tal recorded with her musician friends works by Clara Schumann, Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and Julie von Webenau (1813-1887). Among the piano works are Trois Romances op. 11 by Clara Schumann, which she has dedicated to her fiance Robert Schumann in 1839. Musically as well as personally Robert and Clara Schumann were the most harmonious of couples. The genesis of Trois Romances was accompanied by a lively exchange of ideas between the couple. Deep feelings of love, affection and friendship resonate with these romances, but also with the selected solo piano works by Theodor Kirchner and Julie von Webenau. L'Adieu et le Retour op. 25. Morceaux de Fantaisie by the forgotten composer Julie von Webenau appear as a world premiere recording on this album. Julie von Webenau was twenty-two years old when Robert Schumann met her and her teacher, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart. She began to correspond with Schumann, initially sending him some studies and enclosing with them a letter to Clara Wieck, whose triumphant appearances in Vienna she had heard about. She proved uncommonly sympathetic to Robert Schumann. Indeed, he even spoke of love and passion on her part in a letter to Clara Schumann. L'Adieu et le Retour op. 25 is a work that Julie von Webenau dedicated to Robert Schumann. Also Clara Schumann received many dedications from her contemporaries in the course of her career, but only the dedications from Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Theodor Kirchner fell into a different category. The good friend Theodor Kirchner, who had briefly been Robert Schumann's student at the Leipzig Conservatory and then piano partner of Clara Schumann, dedicated his Op. 9 to Clara in 1859, from which three Preludes appear on this album. The three pieces chosen by Yaara Tal – nos. 10, 11 and 13 – are genuine character-pieces. Clara told their composer that they reminded her of her husband. Another connected work to the family Schumann is Alt-Rhapsodie by Johannes Brahms. This piece was however especially connected with Julie Schumann, the third daugther of the couple. Brahm's composition on a fragment from Goethe’s “Harzreise im Winter” op. 53 seems to be related to Brahms' disappointed love for Julie Schumann. Yaara Tal was keen to lighten the distinctly sombre mood of the original piece and suggested an arrangement for tenor, female choir and piano. Thus, she teamed with the tenor Julian Prégardien, the women's choir of Bayerischer Rundfunk conducted by Yuval Weinberg. This arrangement forms the basis of the album and appears as a world premiere recording as well. On the album Yaara Tal also plays together with her longtime piano duo partner Andreas Groethuysen. The outstanding piano duo has recorded the "Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann" for four-hand piano, which Brahms also dedicated to Julie Schumann in 1861.