Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Schumann, Op.9 (Barenboim, Biret)

Often noted to be Brahms’s greatest set of variations, through (perhaps because of its interpretive difficulties) it’s not often recorded. Brahms wrote this set of variations after Schumann had been committed to an asylum, and very movingly chose as his subject a theme (C-B-A-G#-A, heard first in ) which spelt out the name CLARA, that of Schumann’s wife and greatest love. The bleak, tender, heartfelt brilliance of the contrapuntal writing here is unparalleled in all Romantic piano literature, and the