After the resounding success of Art Sung – Alma Mahler at the London Song Festival in 2018, director Nigel Foster invited us to return in 2019 with a new production. On Thursday, 28^th November 2019 we will proudly premiere Art Sung – Clara Schumann, a celebration of an extraordinary woman, composer and pianist in her bicentenary year.

The life of Clara Schumann (née Wieck) is well documented: she was hailed as ‘Queen of the piano’ and an acclaimed composer at an early age. The battle to marry creative genius Robert Schumann in the face of her father’s implacable opposition is legendary, followed by Robert’s inexorable descent into madness and death, leaving her to raise seven children.

Seen through the prism of ‘Outsiders’, the theme of the 2019 London Song Festival, Art Sung – Clara Schumann explores Clara’s personal struggles and challenges against a background of her identity as a piano virtuoso and the enormous importance of music to her emotional wellbeing.

As she once famously said, “The practice of my art is, after all a great part of my inner self. To me, it is the very air I breathe”.