Saturday, February 28, 3:00 PM

Van Buren Hall, Kinderhook, NY

6 Chatham St., Kinderhook, NY 12106

Soulmates

Celebrating Robert, Clara and Johannes

• soprano Amanda Boyd

• pianist Michael Clement

• violinist Mitsuko Suzuki

• horn player Victor Sungarian

At 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 28th in Kinderhook’s Van Buren Hall, Concerts in the Village continues its 16th Season with a program celebrating the remarkable musical and personal relationship of Robert Schumann, his wife Clara Wieck Schumann and Johannes Brahms, each a brilliant musician and composer.

Performing will be soprano Amanda Boyd, pianist Michael Clement, violinist Mitsuko Suzuki, and horn player Victor Sungarian, all well-known throughout the region and beyond.

Boyd and Clement will offer songs by Clara Wieck Schumann, including the 6 Lieder, Op. 13. One of the 19th century’s finest pianists and teachers, Clara Wieck Schumann was a performing celebrity renowned throughout Europe. But less frequently recognized, she was also an exceptional composer of songs, chamber music, and a piano concerto which is to this day performed throughout the world. As if this were not enough, she was financially and emotionally the primary supporter of her distressed, but brilliant husband Robert and their eight children.

Robert will be represented by one of his most improvisatory works for piano solo, the Fantasie in C, Op. 17. For any pianist the demands of this grand work are daunting, both technically and interpretively. For the listener, its emotional impact and intimacy have few rivals in the piano literature. The opportunity to experience Schumann’s intense Fantasie in concert is something both infrequent and unforgettable.

To conclude the afternoon’s program, pianist Clement will be joined by violinist Mitsuko Suzuki and horn player Victor Sungarian for the Horn Trio, Op. 40 of Johannes Brahms, the third and youngest of the program’s “soulmates.” In 1853 at a critical juncture in his development as a composer, Brahms visited Robert and Clara, seeking advice and instruction from Robert. To the good fortune of generations of music lovers to follow, one of music’s most significant, studied and productive relationships resulted, which in fact continued for Clara and Johannes following Robert’s untimely death in 1856. (The complex relationship of Robert, Clara and Johannes was even the subject of the 1947 movie “Song of Love”, starring Katharine Hepburn as Clara!)

CITV Artistic Director David Smith comments, “I am especially delighted to welcome once again these four outstanding performers as we celebrate the compositional genius of the Schumanns and Brahms. But beyond such mutually inspiring ‘genius,’ in their own imagination CITV listeners will have a personal opportunity to consider how especially motivating – in fact essential – human relationships can prove in the nurturing of musical creativity.”