When they met in 1853, Brahms was nineteen, a brilliant and handsome young man, an unknown pianist and unpublished composer, just beginning his career with his first concert tour.
Clara Schumann was thirty four, a star, a former child prodigy, a famous professional touring and concertizing pianist, as well as a composer, at a time when women did not tour and concertize. She played for royalty. She traveled all over Europe. She played from memory, something unheard of at the time, establishing a standard still followed today. She had to interrupt her concert schedule seven times in twelve years to give birth.
Robert Schumann forty three, was a well-known composer, conductor, music critic, publisher and writer, unhappy that his own career as a pianist had failed due to a hand injury and dissatisfied with his current position as a conductor of a minor orchestra.
Their lives would soon collide in ways the Music History texts do not teach.
The Three Movements for Six Hands are: Love, Misery and Death, a structure that parallels Robert Schumann's piece for orchestra, the Introduction, Scherzo and Finale, Op. 52, written a dozen years earlier in 1841.
I'm also happy to announce that I am offering this book through an advance sales subscription. I got the idea from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who launched a subscription series in Vienna, for which he wrote and performed new piano concertos. The proceeds from this subscription will pay for the editing and printing of the book. The release date for the book is one year from today, May 7, 2015.
To reserve a copy today, send a check for $20.00 – to cover the book, sales tax, shipping and handling – to Terry Row, PO Box 1121, Los Alamos, CA 93440-1121. I'll send autographed copies of the finished volume to subscribers in one year. Additional copies will go on sale without autographs at www.amazon.com and other channels after that.
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