Clara Schumann

Clara Schumann, born Clara Wieck in Leipzig, was famous across Europe as a concert pianist before she was out of her teens, trained relentlessly by her father. She married the composer Robert Schumann over that father's bitter legal opposition, raised eight children, and kept touring for six decades, often as the family's main earner. After Robert's early death she championed his music from the keyboard and became a close lifelong friend of Brahms.

She composed mainly in her younger years: songs, piano works, chamber music, and a piano concerto begun at thirteen. Pressed by her era's expectations of women, she came to doubt her own gifts and largely stopped, spending her final years teaching piano in Frankfurt.

Start with the Piano Trio in G minor, her most substantial chamber work, then the Three Romances for violin and piano, written for the violinist Joseph Joachim.