Geliebte Clara
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Geliebte Clara 
French release poster
Directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms Produced by Alfred Huermer Written by Helma Sanders-Brahms Starring Martina Gedeck
Pascal Greggory
Malik Zidi Music by Johannes Brahms
Clara Schumann
Robert Schumann Cinematography Jürgen Jürges Edited by Isabelle Devinck Distributed by Bodega Films (France)
Release date
- 31 October 2008 (Deutsche Filmfestival in Tokyo)
- 4 December 2008 (Germany)
- 13 May 2009 (France)
Running time
107 minutes Country Germany
France
Hungary Language German
Geliebte Clara ("Beloved Clara") is a Franco-German-Hungarian 2008 film, directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms, her last film before her 2014 death, about the pianist Clara Schumann and her marriage with the composer Robert Schumann.[1]
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This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (June 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
| Geliebte Clara | |
|---|---|
French release poster
| |
| Directed by | Helma Sanders-Brahms |
| Produced by | Alfred Huermer |
| Written by | Helma Sanders-Brahms |
| Starring | Martina Gedeck Pascal Greggory Malik Zidi |
| Music by | Johannes Brahms Clara Schumann Robert Schumann |
| Cinematography | Jürgen Jürges |
| Edited by | Isabelle Devinck |
| Distributed by | Bodega Films (France) |
Release date
|
|
Running time
| 107 minutes |
| Country | Germany France Hungary |
| Language | German |
Geliebte Clara ("Beloved Clara") is a Franco-German-Hungarian 2008 film, directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms, her last film before her 2014 death, about the pianist Clara Schumann and her marriage with the composer Robert Schumann.[1]
Contents
Plot[edit]
After a performance of Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor in Hamburg, where the couple get to know the young composer Johannes Brahms, Clara and Robert Schumann take up residence in their new home in Düsseldorf, where Robert begins his new job as musical director. The demands of composition of his new symphony, the Rhenish Symphony, leads to tension between him and Clara.
A little later Brahms introduces a couple of his own compositions to the Schumanns and they are impressed by his compositional and pianistic skills. Allowing him to stay with them, Brahms lovingly cares for their children. Robert's work on the Rhenish Symphony continues to suffers and he struggles with an addiction to the drug laudanum, on which he is soon dependent. There is further tension between him and his wife, who is expecting another child. Shortly after the successful premiere of the Rhenish Symphony, Schumann becomes acquainted with Dr. Richartz who offers him help with his health problems.
Schumann sees the talented Brahms as his successor, but Brahms leaves the Schumann household when he realizes that he feels more than just friendship for Clara. Additionally the Schumanns are troubled with financial problems.
Robert tries in vain to take his own life, by jumping into the River Rhine, but accepts the offer of Dr. Richartz to be a patient at his sanatorium at Endenich in Bonn. Brahms returns to help Clara to care for children. The two tour together to raise money for the family, while Robert is a patient at the Institute. Eventually Clara and Brahms travel to Bonn, to say a final farewell.
After Robert's death, Brahms and Clara realise that their relationship can never be truly fulfilled, but Brahms celebrates another success with the premiere of his First Piano Concerto, with Clara as solois
After a performance of Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor in Hamburg, where the couple get to know the young composer Johannes Brahms, Clara and Robert Schumann take up residence in their new home in Düsseldorf, where Robert begins his new job as musical director. The demands of composition of his new symphony, the Rhenish Symphony, leads to tension between him and Clara.
A little later Brahms introduces a couple of his own compositions to the Schumanns and they are impressed by his compositional and pianistic skills. Allowing him to stay with them, Brahms lovingly cares for their children. Robert's work on the Rhenish Symphony continues to suffers and he struggles with an addiction to the drug laudanum, on which he is soon dependent. There is further tension between him and his wife, who is expecting another child. Shortly after the successful premiere of the Rhenish Symphony, Schumann becomes acquainted with Dr. Richartz who offers him help with his health problems.
Schumann sees the talented Brahms as his successor, but Brahms leaves the Schumann household when he realizes that he feels more than just friendship for Clara. Additionally the Schumanns are troubled with financial problems.
Robert tries in vain to take his own life, by jumping into the River Rhine, but accepts the offer of Dr. Richartz to be a patient at his sanatorium at Endenich in Bonn. Brahms returns to help Clara to care for children. The two tour together to raise money for the family, while Robert is a patient at the Institute. Eventually Clara and Brahms travel to Bonn, to say a final farewell.
After Robert's death, Brahms and Clara realise that their relationship can never be truly fulfilled, but Brahms celebrates another success with the premiere of his First Piano Concerto, with Clara as solois
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann
| |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Portrait by Franz von Lenbach, 1878
| |
| Born |
Clara Josephine Wieck
13 September 1819 |
| Died | 20 May 1896 (aged 76) |
| Occupation |
|
| Organization | Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium |
| Spouse(s) |
Robert Schumann
(m. 1840; died 1856) |
| Children | Eight |
Clara Schumann (/ˈʃuːmɑːn/; née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher. She is regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, exerting her influence over a 61-year concert career. She changed the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works. She composed solo works for her instrument, piano concertos, chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
She was married to composer Robert Schumann, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him. She was the first to perform many works by her husband and by Brahms in public. She began touring at age eleven, and later frequently performed with the violinist Joseph Joachim. Beginning in 1878, she was an influential piano educator at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, where she attracted international students.
Contents
Life[edit]
Youth[edit]
Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich Wieck and Marianne Wieck (née Tromlitz).[1] Her mother was a famous singer in Leipzig who performed piano and soprano solos on a weekly basis at the Gewandhaus.[2] Irreconcilable differences between Clara's parents, in part due to her father's unyielding nature,[2] but prompted by an affair between her mother and Adolph Bargiel, her father's friend,[3][4] resulted in the Wiecks' divorce in 1824, with Marianne marrying Bargiel. Five-year-old Clara remained with her father while Marianne and Bargiel eventually moved to Berlin, limiting contact between Clara and her mother to written letters and occasional visits.[5]
Child prodigy[edit]
From an early age, Clara's father planned her career and life down to the smallest detail. She had started receiving basic piano instruction from her mother at the age of four,[6] but after her mother moved out, she began taking daily one-hour lessons from her father, which included subjects such as piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition, and counterpoint, and then had to practice for two hours every day. He followed the methods in his own book, Wiecks pianistische Erziehung zum schönen Anschlag und zum singenden Ton, aiming for a delicate touch and a singing sound.[6][7] Her musical studies came largely at the expense of her broader general education, although she still studied religion and languages under her father's control.[8]
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Clara Wieck made her official debut on 28 October 1828 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.[9][6] The same year, she performed at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of the mental hospital at Colditz Castle. There, she met another gifted young pianist who had been invited to the musical evening, Robert Schumann, who was nine years older. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to stop studying law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father. While taking lessons, he rented a room in the Wieck household and stayed about a year. He would sometimes dress up as a ghost and scare Clara, creating a bond between the two.[10]
From September 1831 to April 1832, Clara toured Paris and other European cities, accompanied by her father.[6] In Weimar, she performed a bravura piece by Henri Herz for Goethe, who presented her with a medal with his portrait and a written note saying: "For the gifted artist Clara Wieck". During that tour, Niccolò Paganini, who was also in Paris, offered to appear with her.[11] Her Paris recital was poorly attended because many people had fled the city due to an outbreak of cholera.[11] The tour marked the transition from a child prodigy to a young woman performer.[6]
Vienna[edit]
From December 1837 to April 1838, Clara Wieck performed a series of recitals in Vienna when she was 18.[12] Franz Grillparzer, Austria's leading dramatic poet, wrote a poem entitled "Clara Wieck and Beethoven" after hearing Wieck perform Beethoven's Appassionata sonata during one of these recitals.[12] Wieck performed to sell-out crowds and laudatory critical reviews; Benedict Randhartinger, a friend of Franz Schubert, gave Wieck an autographed copy of Schubert's Erlkönig, inscribing it "To the celebrated artist, Clara Wieck."[12] Chopin described her playing to Franz Liszt, who came to hear one of Wieck's concerts and subsequently praised her extravagantly in a letter that was published in the Parisian Revue et Gazette Musicale and later, in translation, in the Leipzig journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.[13] On 15 March, Wieck was named a Königliche und Kaiserliche Kammervirtuosin ("Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuoso"),[14] Austria's highest musical honor.[13]
An anonymous music critic, describing her Vienna recitals, said: "The appearance of this artist can be regarded as epoch-making... In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give."[15]
Marriage to Robert Schumann[edit]
Robert Schumann was a little more than nine years older than Clara. In 1837, when she was age 18, he proposed to her and she accepted. Robert then asked her father for her hand in marriage.[16] Wieck was strongly opposed to the marriage, and refused his permission. Robert and Clara had to go to court and sue him, and the judge allowed the marriage, which notably took place on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday, when she attained majority status.[17][18] From then on, the couple maintained a joint musical and personal diary of their life together.[19]
Joseph Joachim[edit]
The Schumanns first met violinist Joseph Joachim in November 1844, when he was just 14 years old.[20] A year later Clara wrote in her diary that in a concert on 11 November 1845, "little Joachim was very much liked. He played a new violin concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, which is said to be wonderful."[21] In May 1853, they heard Joachim play the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. She wrote that he played "with a finish, a depth of poetic feeling, his whole soul in every note, so ideally, that I have never heard violin-playing like it, and I can truly say that I have never received so indelible an impression from any virtuoso." A lasting friendship developed which "for more than forty years never failed Clara in things great or small, never wavered in its loyalty."[22]
Over her career, Clara gave over 238 concerts with Joachim in Germany and Britain, "more than with any other artist".[23] "The two were particularly noted for their playing of Beethoven's sonatas for violin and piano."[24]
Johannes Brahms[edit]
In the spring of 1853, the then-unknown 20-year-old Johannes Brahms met Joachim and made a very favorable impression. Brahms received from him a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and thus presented himself at the Schumanns' home in Düsseldorf. Brahms played some of his piano solo compositions for the Schumanns, and they were deeply impressed.[25] Robert published an article highly lauding Brahms, and Clara wrote in the diary that Brahms "seemed as if sent straight from God".[26]
Brahms played his First Symphony for her before its premiere. She gave some advice about the Adagio, which he took to heart. She expressed her appreciation of the Symphony as a whole, but mentioned her dissatisfaction with the endings of the third and fourth movements.[27] She was the first to perform many of his works in public, including the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.[28]
During Robert's last years confined to an asylum, Brahms was a strong presence in Clara's life,[29] and a series of letters were shared between the two, which describe Brahms' strong feelings for Clara.[30] Their relationship has been interpreted as somewhere between friendship and love.[31]
Robert Schumann's confinement and death[edit]
In February 1854, Robert Schumann had a mental collapse, attempted suicide, and was committed, at his request, to an insane asylum, where he stayed for the last two years of his life. In March 1854, Brahms, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, and Julius Otto Grimm spent time with Clara, playing music for her and with her to divert her mind from the tragedy.[32] Brahms composed some private piano pieces for Clara to console her: Four Klavierstücke and a set of Variations on the same theme of Robert's that Clara had herself written variations on a year earlier (her Op. 20). The music was not intended to be published, but were for Clara alone; Brahms later thought to publish them anonymously, but eventually they were issued as his Four Ballades Op. 10 and Schumann Variations Op. 9. Brahms dedicated the Variations to both Schumanns in the hope that Robert would be released soon and rejoined with Clara.[33]
Clara was not allowed to visit Robert for the entire two years he was in the institution, until the day before his death. Robert Schumann died on 29 July 1856.[34]
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