Ira Maria Witoschynskyj - Piano Music Written An

"A woman's place is in the home." So the saying goes, but Clara Schumann, one of the great pianists of the nineteenth century, had a better idea. The present album is dedicated to this unique woman musician who died one hundred years ago in 1896. The selections, most of them premiere recordings, offer us a close an illuminating look at her compositional art and the family musical context in which she lived and worked. The intimate correspondence she carried on with Johannes Brahms, her troubled relationship with her husband after his suicide attempt, her no-is-not-an-answer attitude: Clara Schumann was more than just Robert's better half and not at all a homebody. It is only in the last ten years, with the new interest in women's contributions to the arts, history, and the sciences that Clara Schumann has finally received recognition as a composer in her own right. This recording also promises to bring Woldemar Bargiel, Clara Schumann's half-brother, some of the recognition he rightly deserves as a composer. The introverted Bargiel made ends meet as a private music teacher in Berlin for years before receiving appointments as a piano and theory teacher at the Cologne Conservatory in 1859 and as the director of the Rotterdam Music Society in 1865. He was already a renowned composer when he returned to Berlin in 1874, this time as a member of the faculty of the Berlin Academy of Music.