ZWICKAUER TAGEBLATT - ZWICKAU, June 19, 1996
An evening with Babette Hierholzer - "Festival Clara"
ZWICKAU - A piano recital by Babette Hierholzer formed the latest brilliant concert in Zwickau's "Festival Clara" series. The soloist recorded the sound-track of the 1981 Schumann film "Spring Symphony" and also stood in for Nastassja Kinski in her role as Clara Wieck-Schumann. On this occasion too – her second appearance in Zwickau – she devoted her talent to works of Robert Schumann's wife and companion. This time, Babette Hierholzer had prepared very special fare indeed: the selfsame, very demanding concert programme that Clara played in London in June 1856, only shortly before Robert died
The commanding power of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Eroica" variations opened the concert. This work was followed by rarities to the German concert platform "Andante cantabile" and "Presto leggiero" by the English composer William Stemdale Bennett, which called to mind Schumann's "lining sounding landscapes". Appropriately enough, Clara Schumann's own variations on a theme by Robert formed the central focus on the evening's programme, in an interpretation that impressively displayed both the poetic and the virtuosic aspects of the composition. This applied likewise to the seldom-played and barely-known Sarabande and Gavotte by Johannes Brahms, the autograph of which is to be found in Zwickau's Robert Schumann Museum. On the other hand, the A major sonata by Domenico Scarlatti was somewhat less of success, much of its playful magic and transparency going missing. Schumann's "Carnaval" resounded with great power of expression, its individual characters and dances assuming almost tangible form in an imaginative and most effective performance.
The highlight of the evening was, of course, the ensuing rededication of the piano upon which the nine-year-old Clara Wieck gave her first public concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in 1828. After decades of serving merely as a display piece in the Robert Schumann Museum, the piano has now undergone a quite miraculous restoration at the hands of Robert A Brown (Austria) Dressed in appropriate period costume, and in the presence of Brown, Babette Hierholzer played the three Polonaises of Clara's opus 1, giving the audience an opportunity to hear for themselves the tonal excellence the instrument again possesses. – E. Möller
Translation: Janet & Michael Berridge
Quatre Polonaises : Clara Schumann
Edited by Babette Hierholzer
Info on ordering sheet music:
Ries & Erler Musikverlag
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