Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 54

This has been my favorite piano concerto ever since I heard the piece! It is so romantically melodic, full of beautiful harmonic gestures, full of emotions that encompasses all of the spectrum, and masterfully crafted. Also, the fact that Robert Schumann composed this piece for Clara and how Clara Schumann tresured this piece all through her life makes this piece so lovely! :)

Clara Schumann was the daughter of Robert Schumann's piano teacher. Robert gave up his studies in piano due to a hand injury and became a composer, but Clara became one of the msot respected pianists of her age. Friedrich Wieck, Clara's father, actually was so against the marriage of these two that Robert Schumann and Friedrich Wieck actually had to go through a law suit in order to make this marriage happen. At the end Robert and Clara got married and became the best known musician-couple in the music history so far! Clara really believed in Robert's talent and wrote in her diary "My highest wish is that Robert should compose for orchestra". She wrote this partially because Robert Schumann's forte genre is not symphonic music, and he had previously focused on keyboard genre and lieder. A year after their marriage, Robert wrote a Fantasie in A minor for piano and orchestra. Clara was delighted with this love gesture from her lover and performed it herself. However, the piece failed to get published and was put away. Three years later, Robert Schumann took out this special piece again, and turned it into the first movement of A minor concerto!!! I think the fact that the piece has its origin in a Fantasie manuvoured its characterisitc and mood to be more of romantic and emotionally sophisticated and expressive piece rather than technically virtuosic. Up to this point, with a few excpetions such as Beethoven piano concerto No.4 and No.5, the primary function of concerto was to show off the soloist's fancy technique. Schumann's piece definitely goes against this trend and opened up a new route for the genre. Also, anoter fun fact is that the famously beloved first theme of the first movement C-B-A-A is actually interpretated as german spelling of the name "Clara" in Italian- Chiara.

For any composer, the virtual goal of composing a concerto has been weaving the soloist's part and orchestral part masterfully. Schumann wrote in 1839 "We must await the genius who will show us in a newer and more brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the key- board, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene", and with his Piano Concerto in A minor, he proved that the genius the world was waiting for was indeed himself!

I love watching Martha Argerich perform this piece because she totally seems like what Clara Schumann would have looked like! hehehe :) I hope you enjoy listening to this lovely piece today! Full of warmth and love for you who reads this from me <3