Clara Schumann / Clytus Gottwald (arr.) Drei Lieder nach Texten von Heinrich Heine und Friedrich Rückert

The most famous female pianist of the 19th century, Clara Schumann, née Wieck, grew up in a musical family. She was strongly encouraged by her father – perhaps a little too strongly, considering that, without any further ado, he penned his daughter’s first diary entries himself. Even as the mother of eight children and wife of Robert Schumann, she continued her impressive career as a concert pianist. Clara Schumann composed numerous piano works, songs, works for chamber ensembles and a piano concerto.

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Friedrich Rückert, born 1788 in Schweinfurt, died 1866 near Coburg. Poet and translator. Professor of oriental philology in Erlangen. Personal details

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) is regarded as one of the most important German poets of the 19th century. He was born in Düsseldorf and is best known for his lyric poetry, which combines Romanticism with sharp social criticism. Many of his works deal with love, nature and freedom. Because of his political views, Heine lived in exile in Paris for many years.

He also occupies a prominent place in the history of music. His lyrical texts were set to music by numerous composers and had a particularly profound influence on the Romantic art song. Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Hugo Wolf, in particular, created musical works of enduring significance based on Heine’s poems. The poetic combination of linguistic simplicity, emotional depth and often ironic ambiguity offered composers a wide range of possibilities for musical interpretation. As a result, Heine’s poetry became a central part of the Romantic art-song repertoire and continues to influence vocal music to this day.

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The choral conductor, composer and musicologist Clytus Gottwald (1925 - 2023) made significant contributions to contemporary choral music. As editor for New Music at Südfunk Stuttgart and founder and director of the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, he was in productive exchange with his contemporaries, Pierre Boulez, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many others. With his Schola Cantorum, a 16-voice chamber vocal ensemble, Gottwald decisively shaped the a cappella choral culture of the highest technical level that is taken for granted today. Clytus Gottwald's transcriptions of piano songs and instrumental pieces for unaccompanied choir are appreciated by choirs all over the world. Modelled on the style of Ligeti, his works set the highest of musical standards. Clytus Gottwald has received several awards for his services, including the Cultural Prize of Baden-Württemberg in 2009, the European Church Music Prize in 2012, and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014. His importance for the development of contemporary choral music cannot be overestimated. Personal details