Description
“There is a young man from Hamburg endowed with such genius that he eclipses all other young composers.”
These are some of the words, all entirely superlative in tone and, with hindsight, profoundly prophetic, that Robert Schumann dedicated to Johannes Brahms after meeting him in person on 30 September 1853 at his home in Düsseldorf.
On that occasion, Brahms presented and performed several of his compositions, among them most likely the recently completed Sonata Op. 5.
A month later, Schumann composed his last work for solo piano, the Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn), whose enigmatic expressive aura was immediately grasped by his wife Clara, who described them as “very original as always, but also very difficult to understand, because they sound so strange.”
Clara herself, an accomplished composer and a renowned performer, wrote her Variations, Op. 20 in June 1853, based on a theme by Robert Schumann. This theme comes from the fourth piece of his Bunte Blätter, Op. 99. Interestingly, just a year later, Brahms used the same theme to compose a set of sixteen highly inspired variations.
In this program, the young and insightful musician Paolo Ehrenheim brings together these three works, all written within a closely related time period. By placing them side by side, he reveals the artistic and personal connections – what might be called “elective affinities” – between their composers.
