Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Schumann and Zaimont
On today’s date in 1830, an 11-year old piano virtuoso named Clara Wieck took the stage of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for her first solo recital. Her father was a piano teacher, who had groomed Clara for a solo career since infancy. This was the age of the great composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, and little Clara also wrote original works for her own performances. Clara’s Op. 1, a set of four Polonaises, was published the following year. Clara’s career as a composer and performer would eventually span five decades, and, like her father, she became one of the most famous piano teachers of her time. Nowadays composer-performers are more common in the world of jazz than classical music, although there are exceptions. One of them is Judith Lang Zaimont, who, like Clara Schumann, developed a triple career as composer, performer, and teacher. “Composing is the central fact of my life,” says Zaimont. “My music seeks to appeal both to the heart (the Ahh! response) and to the head (the Aha! response). When this mix is just right, I can sense it—and reactions from audiences can be positive, too.”