Robert Schumann

The following was submitted by Tufts University:  The Tufts University Department of Music presents an afternoon of German vocal music with performance faculty member and soprano Andrea Ehrenreich. The performance will take place in the Distler Performance Hall at the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 3 p.m. as part of the Sunday and Tufts — Community Concert Series. Performing with Ms. Ehrenreich are fellow performance faculty colleagues Thomas Stumpf, pianist; David Patterson, guitarist; and Chester Brezniak, clarinetist.  ...

The following was submitted by Tufts University:  The Tufts University Department of Music presents an afternoon of German vocal music with performance faculty member and soprano Andrea Ehrenreich. The performance will take place in the Distler Performance Hall at the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 3 p.m. as part of the Sunday and Tufts — Community Concert Series. Performing with Ms. Ehrenreich are fellow performance faculty colleagues Thomas Stumpf, pianist; David Patterson, guitarist; and Chester Brezniak, clarinetist.  ...

We know the beginning of the story of Robert and Clara Schumann: The romance between the child virtuoso and the impulsive young composer. The furtive kisses. Robert's proposal. Clara's father's objection. The lawsuit. The victory. Robert's outpouring of love songs in 1840, his "Year of Song. " It is rarely mentioned that Clara's own first songs, written at Robert's urging early in that year, were as good as his at that point - possibly even better. "Er ist gekommen" is a masterpiece, with great emotional range and shading.

Jordan Hall hosted an apposite duo on Tuesday night: Russell Sherman, the most singular pianist in Boston, performing music of Robert Schumann, the most singular composer of the Romantic era. Sherman and Schumann show parallels beyond their unconventionality: Both carry through a personal vision with consistent integrity; both leverage their idiosyncrasies to draw the listener into sometimes startling intimacies; and both have the uncanny ability to...

Listening to the Claremont Trio at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday afternoon, you just knew that spring is coming. These fine musicians brought the vigor and nerviness of youth to the piano trios of Robert Schumann (the last and least known of his three, in G Minor, Op. 110) and Johannes Brahms (the first of his four, in B Minor, Op. 8). This was the final installment of three concerts this season devoted to the two composers' trios, and it ended with a flourish. The choice of works was significant.

One of the difficulties in programming the music of Robert Schumann is to decide, first of all, which Schumann? The young experimenter and iconoclast, the slightly older master of song, or the later bourgeois composer who struggled so hard to say something new? On Sunday afternoon, Emmanuel Music put on its fourth program this year in its series devoted to Schumann's chamber music. Almost all of the pieces were from late in his career. Later is generally not better with Schumann, whose greatest works appeared just before and after his marriage in 1840.

One of the most reliably creative chamber groups around, Chameleon Arts Ensemble marked the close of its 10th season with an anniversary concert dedicated to that round number. Two of the works shared Opus 10 designations, and the rest featured at least some decimal reference. Three instruments - Joanna Kurkowicz's violin, Scott Woolweaver's viola, and Rafael Popper-Keizer's cello - made a surprisingly big sound in Ernst von Dohnányi's Op. 10 Serenade, low and open strings creating a folk-tinged Romanticism, a village band essaying Brahms; the players...

The piano only seems like a straightforward machine, and the young American pianist Jonathan Biss demonstrates a control over its quirky but fabulous workings that is rather astonishing. When he played Robert Schumann's unconventional, monumental "Kreisleriana" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, that technique was fully in service of the music, and the results were memorable. Biss took the galloping triplets of the opening terrifically fast -- Schumann's intricate cross-accents were drowned in a storm of virtuosity -- but the torrent...

Jordan Hall hosted an apposite duo on Tuesday night: Russell Sherman, the most singular pianist in Boston, performing music of Robert Schumann, the most singular composer of the Romantic era. Sherman and Schumann show parallels beyond their unconventionality: Both carry through a personal vision with consistent integrity; both leverage their idiosyncrasies to draw the listener into sometimes startling intimacies; and both have the uncanny ability to...

This season, the Boston Classical Orchestra and music director Steven Lipsitt are celebrating bicentennials of Felix Mendelssohn (b. 1809) and Robert Schumann (b. 1810), but last weekend, they first needed to mark another birthday: their own. For its 30th anniversary, the group commissioned Cambridge composer Howard Frazin’s “In the Forests of the Night,’’ an atmospheric overture that had its premiere on Saturday with a repeat performance on Sunday. Frazin’s starting point was his own setting of William Blake’s “The Tyger’’...

This season, the Boston Classical Orchestra and music director Steven Lipsitt are celebrating bicentennials of Felix Mendelssohn (b. 1809) and Robert Schumann (b. 1810), but last weekend, they first needed to mark another birthday: their own. For its 30th anniversary, the group commissioned Cambridge composer Howard Frazin’s “In the Forests of the Night,’’ an atmospheric overture that had its premiere on Saturday with a repeat performance on Sunday. Frazin’s starting point was his own setting of William Blake’s “The Tyger’’ (given a rhapsodic reading by...

One of the most reliably creative chamber groups around, Chameleon Arts Ensemble marked the close of its 10th season with an anniversary concert dedicated to that round number. Two of the works shared Opus 10 designations, and the rest featured at least some decimal reference. Three instruments - Joanna Kurkowicz's violin, Scott Woolweaver's viola, and Rafael Popper-Keizer's cello - made a surprisingly big sound in Ernst von Dohnányi's Op. 10 Serenade, low and open strings creating a folk-tinged Romanticism, a village band essaying Brahms; the players...

Listening to the Claremont Trio at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday afternoon, you just knew that spring is coming. These fine musicians brought the vigor and nerviness of youth to the piano trios of Robert Schumann (the last and least known of his three, in G Minor, Op. 110) and Johannes Brahms (the first of his four, in B Minor, Op. 8). This was the final installment of three concerts this season devoted to the two composers' trios, and it ended with a flourish. The choice of works was significant.

We know the beginning of the story of Robert and Clara Schumann: The romance between the child virtuoso and the impulsive young composer. The furtive kisses. Robert's proposal. Clara's father's objection. The lawsuit. The victory. Robert's outpouring of love songs in 1840, his "Year of Song. " It is rarely mentioned that Clara's own first songs, written at Robert's urging early in that year, were as good as his at that point - possibly even better. "Er ist gekommen" is a masterpiece, with great emotional range and shading.

One of the difficulties in programming the music of Robert Schumann is to decide, first of all, which Schumann? The young experimenter and iconoclast, the slightly older master of song, or the later bourgeois composer who struggled so hard to say something new? On Sunday afternoon, Emmanuel Music put on its fourth program this year in its series devoted to Schumann's chamber music. Almost all of the pieces were from late in his career. Later is generally not better with Schumann, whose greatest works appeared just before and after his marriage in...

The piano only seems like a straightforward machine, and the young American pianist Jonathan Biss demonstrates a control over its quirky but fabulous workings that is rather astonishing. When he played Robert Schumann's unconventional, monumental "Kreisleriana" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, that technique was fully in service of the music, and the results were memorable. Biss took the galloping triplets of the opening terrifically fast -- Schumann's intricate cross-accents were drowned in a storm of virtuosity -- but the torrent...

Variations suit Emanuel Ax. The pianist's Celebrity Series recital on Friday — four sets of variations — played to one of the core strengths of his pianism: not so much based around cultivating a distinctive sound or interpretive posture, but rather, a mastery of musical taste, approaching each piece with proper etiquette, and more than enough technique to back it up. Ax might not push many boundaries, but he hits traditional marks with easy flair....