Our Festival Focus: Clara, Robert, Johannes​ celebrates the abiding friendship between Clara and Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms who encouraged and inspired each other through lives of prolific creativity, troubling uncertainty, and perhaps even unrequited love. 

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Alongside his wife Clara, Robert Schumann composed many Lieder (art songs). Their marriage was vehemently opposed by Clara’s father, and in the year leading up to a court decision that finally allowed them to marry, an outpouring of creativity led Robert to compose nearly 140 Lieder, some of the most beautiful and poignant art songs ever written.

Astonishing as it seems in hindsight, Clara Wieck Schumann often doubted her own ability to compose. “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but…a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” Her Piano Concerto in A minor leaves no doubt about the depth and breadth of her musical imagination. Guest pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, whose debut album Romance—the Piano Music of Clara Schumann won popular and critical acclaim around the world, makes her debut with the NAC Orchestra to perform this lovely concerto.

Johannes Brahms wrote his Concerto for Violin and Cello at the request of his friend, cellist Robert Hausmann, but he also used the commission as an opportunity to extend an olive branch to another close friend, violinist Joseph Joachim. The two had broken over Brahms’s support of Joachim’s wife in divorce proceedings years earlier. Joachim accepted the peace offering, leading Clara Schumann to call the concerto a work of reconciliation. By featuring both violin and cello, Brahms creates a kind of single “super-instrument” that conveys a special power neither could offer alone. Guest violinist and NACO Creative Partner James Ehnes joins forces with guest cellist Nicolas Altstaedt for this performance.