Clara Schumann

Clara Wieck Schumann was one of the most distinguished concert pianists of the nineteenth century. She often premiered compositions by Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, and Robert Schumann, whom she married at age twenty-one against her father’s wishes. By this time, she had attained an international reputation as a bravura performer. A composer in her own right, she wrote some sixty-six pieces over the course of her lifetime, but the focus of her career was performing and touring, and she composed very little after the age of thirty-six. In 1878, Schumann took a teaching post at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and in this capacity made a significant contribution to modern piano-playing technique.