Helene Grimaud - For Clara - Import Vinyl 2 LP Record

Credits:

Helene Grimaud

Description:

Two composers have dedicated their "literary music" to a woman in love. The newest album by the leading French pianist Hélène Grimaud is a collection of works by Schumann and Brahms. The album includes Schumann's eight-piece piano cycle "Kreisleriana" and Brahms' "Three Interludes" and "Nine Lieder and Songs". Kreisleriana was inspired by the eccentric alter ego (Kreisler) of Romantic storyteller E.T.A. Hoffmann in his writings. Grimaud has known this piece since he was a teenager and has recorded it before. I've known this piece since I was a teenager," Grimaud said, "and it's the kind of work you can spend your whole life with and always discover something new about. The baritone prodigy Konstantin Klimmel joins Grimaud for "Nine Lieder und Lieder," a collection of songs by Brahms, who discovered Schumann's talent, and who expresses his unrequited love for Schumann's widow, Clara. Schumann, whom Grimaud describes as "the most literary of composers."The breadth of his literary endeavors is evidenced not only by the sheer number of songs, choral and operatic works from Goethe, Byron and others, but also by his skillful weaving of literary inspiration into his own piano music. Nowhere is this element more casually expressed than in "Kreisleriana. Schumann began composing "Kreisleriana" in the spring of 1838. In mid-April, he wrote to Clara Wieck: "Since your last letter, I have completed a new cycle. It will be called "Kreisleriana. [...] All my music seems to me to be concise and wonderfully combined." When Schumann sent the score to his publisher, he also sent a copy to Clara. He intended to dedicate it to her. (The first edition was dedicated to Chopin, perhaps out of deference to Clara's father, Wieck.) Brahms' close association with Robert and Clara Schumann probably forced him to associate himself with his "Kreisler," and in his "Variations on a Theme by Schumann," Op. 9, 1854, he introduced the Schumann-esque idea of an alter ego.But a decade later, in "Nine Lieder und Lieder" we can see where Brahms' personal literary interests lay, at least with regard to songwriting. Universal Music/IMS