Works by Clara and Robert Schumann

Composed by Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck Schumann

Chandos / CHAN10841 / Concert Hall, Snape Maltings, Suffolk

Recorded January 2015

'Cooper asserts her stylistic credentials right at the start of the disc in Robert’s Humoreske, playing with a warm, golden tone and fluidly finding that distinction between the extrovert and introvert traits that were key to Schumann’s musical personality – identified by him as the outgoing Florestan and the musing Eusebius who inspired his creativity. 

Cooper’s articulation is clearly defined but also effectively varied in touch and colour; her phrasing in the more meditative music is mellifluous, a quality that beautifully spills over into the F sharp major Romanze and also into the Aria that forms the second movement of the F sharp minor Sonata. Here, too, in the sonata’s other movements there is no absence of the necessary sinew and ardour.'

Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph, February 2015