Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Beatrice Rana and Yannick Nézet-Séguin play Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms

Live from the Summer Festival Baden-Baden 2022.

Hidden behind Schumann's Piano Concerto is a love story. The work’s main melody represents Schumann's wife Clara. And quite literally: in the Schumann home, Clara was called "Chiara" in Italian. If we take out the letters unrelated to music (“i” and “r”), c, h (German for b), a, and a remain: the first four notes of the main melody that shapes the course the whole piece. Incidentally, Johannes Brahms also dedicated a melody to Clara, in the fourth movement of his First Symphony, which is performed in the Brahms Cycle I. In this concert, we hear Symphony No. 2, a musical pastorale which the composer completed in Baden-Baden, where the work was long referred to as the "Lichtental Symphony".