With Clara Schumann’s sad and elegantly prismatic Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, the trio of soulful composer-pianists is complete.īenjamin Grosvenor, now 30 years old, finds his way into all of this music in a touching and utterly honest way. Brahms called them “lullabies for his sorrows.” “Play my Kreisleriana sometimes!” Robert once wrote to Clara, “There’s a very wild love in a few movements, and your life, and mine, and many of your glances.”Īlong with other smaller jewels by Robert Schumann, the CD also features three heartbreaking intermezzi by Clara and Robert’s dear friend Johannes Brahms. Given that Robert’s life would end at the age of 46 in an asylum for the mentally ill, it feels like an eerie and tragic parallel that the Kreisler character was obsessed with the thought that madness was lying in wait for him. Hoffmann’s fictional genius Johannes Kreisler, a moody conductor who appears frequently in Hoffmann’s output, including in the novel The Life and Opinions of a Tomcat Murr. The inspiration for the piece comes from writer E.T.A. The centerpiece is Robert’s Kreisleriana, written during the emotional time when he and Clara were petitioning the courts to allow their marriage, while her father remained vehemently opposed. Now that the world has been set back into motion, Grosvenor has a new CD, this time featuring the mercurial and episodic music of Robert Schumann, along with pieces by Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. He crafted it lovingly, with a spellbinding blend of intimacy and spaciousness. The last time I spoke with pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, he’d just finished a very personal recording of pieces by Franz Liszt, recorded in the strange emptiness of Covid lockdown in London.

Benjamin grosvenor