In Bizarre Love Triangle, Vancouver Academy of Music chamber players explore relationship between three 1800s composers, January 28
Program of vigour and yearning features compositions by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms
David Lakirovich.
AK Coope.
Vancouver Academy of Music presents Bizarre Love Triangle at Koerner Recital Hall on January 28 at 2 pm
IN GERMANY CIRCA 1850, Robert and Clara Schumann were the music power couple that reigned supreme. The pair of pianists met when Robert moved into Clara’s family home to take lessons from her father, Friedrich Wieck, who was a talented pianist in his own right.
United by their passion for music, Robert and Clara fell deeply in love, eventually marrying despite years of objection from the latter’s father. Robert went on to write some of the Romantic era’s most notable compositions, which Clara played with fervour. They had seven children together over the course of 13 years—and a year before the birth of their last baby, enter Johannes Brahms.
Brahms approached the couple seeking piano lessons from Robert, and impressed them profoundly, developing a close relationship to the two. Meanwhile, Robert’s mental health was deteriorating—he was eventually checked into an insane asylum, and passed away two years later. It was in those final years of his life that Brahms became Clara’s support system, growing close enough to her to garner speculation around a musical love triangle for the ages.
Nearly two centuries later, the trio’s complicated dynamic has become the backbone for a Vancouver Academy of Music chamber concert, Bizarre Love Triangle. On the program for the show is a work from each of the three master musicians: Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor, and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-Flat major.
The afternoon full of joy, vigour, love, and yearning is presented by the Vancouver Academy of Music’s faculty members, including violinists David Lakirovich and John Marcus, violist Jacob van der Sloot, cellist Joseph Elworthy, clarinetist AK Coope, and pianist Ian Parker.
Tickets to the performance are available via the Vancouver Academy of Music.
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