Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

🎹 sharon su

@doodlyroses.com

3.8K followers 160 following 4K posts

Classical pianist, recording artist, writer | she/her Website: sharonsu.com Biweekly newsletter: https://buttondown.com/doodlyroses One of the “Three Musketeers of classical Bluesky” — @violanorth.bsky.social

buttondown.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · Sep 3

📣 hear ye hear ye, my recording of Florence Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 1 is out, and there’s a video

Florence Price: Fantasie nègre No. 1 in E Minor, performed by Sharon Su

YouTube video by doodlyroses

www.youtube.com

4 20 65

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 9h

This is so relatable

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 21h

[bolts upright] oh my god Clara and Robert Schumann are basically Katie and Johnny Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

okay I’m going back to bed

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 22h

this man is m e s s y

Emily E Hogstad @song-of-lark.bsky.social · 23h

Another wild thing about the Ernestine situation is that once he found out she wasn't going to inherit a lot of money, like he'd assumed, he went meh on her. He kissed Clara before breaking up with Ernestine! And E really struggled afterward. He was messy AF

In February 1838, he tried explaining the situation to Clara:

It was in the winter of 1834 ... When ... I began to think about how it could end, when I found out about her poverty and, no matter how hard-working I was, I only achieved a little of myself, it began to weigh on me like shackles - I saw no goal, no help - I also heard about the unfortunate family complications in which Ernestine found herself, and I resented her for keeping it secret from me for so long. All this taken together - damn me - I must confess, I grew colder; my artistic career seemed crazy to me; the image to which I clung for salvation now haunted me in my dreams like a ghost; I should now work like a craftsman for my daily bread; Ernestine couldn't earn anything; I talked to my mother about it, and we agreed.

1 10

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 22h

What little music we have from her is…not sentimental or full of vapid virtuosity and it’s clearly very intelligently crafted??? I know music is very subjective but I really don’t know what’s wrong with people’s ears sometimes

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 22h

I giggle inside every time

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 22h

Was Robert actually the biggest hot mess of the Romantic era

2 5

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Genuinely hard to tell if portraits back then were styled pretty consistently or if our good friend Robert just had a type

Portrait of a 19 year old Ernestine von Fricken, Robert Schumann’s ex-fiancée. She is a young pianist with soft features and dark brown hair pulled back, showing her elegantly sloping shoulders.

Portrait of Anna Robena Laidlaw, a pianist who Robert Schumann was “very good friends” with. She is a young pianist with soft features and dark brown hair pulled back, showing her elegantly sloping shoulders.

Portrait of a young Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife. She is a young pianist with soft features and dark brown hair pulled back, showing her elegantly sloping shoulders.

1 8

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Look I am inspired all the time by my wonderful talented friends without wanting to sleep with them, so I want to give Robert the benefit of the doubt, but I find this very very suspect

There she met Robert Schumann who created eight pieces for piano named Fanta jestücke, in her honour, the same year of
1837. It is not clear how close their relationship was, but Laidlaw is presumed to be the reason he started to compose again after a break of four months.

1 5

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

I will never ever let go of the fact that Robert wrote his ex-fiancée Ernestine von Fricken into his Carnaval Op. 9 and then just. expected Clara to play it

Someone explain this man’s thinking to me

4 8

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

I am not well

1 3

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Ok Robert my good bitch if this really is all about Clara then why the f did you dedicate the whole thing to some other pretty 18yo pianist, pls explain

Schumann described this piece as a combination of wedding bells and funeral bells.
In a letter to his fiancée Clara Wieck, who would become his wife, Clara Schumann, three years later, he wrote about this last piece:
"everything ultimately dissolves into a merry wedding - but my distress for you came back at the end, and the wedding bells sound as if commingled with a death knell.

3 7

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

I had forgotten the exact backstory for Robert’s Fantasiestücke Op. 12 and Ende vom Lied always, *always* sounds to me like wedding bells and the fluttering heartbeat of a nervous but excited young bride and I was like “this HAS to be about Clara!” and looked it up and

Robert Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, is a set of eight pieces for piano, written in 1837.
The title was inspired by the 1814-15 collection of novellas, essays, treatises, letters, and writings about music, Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner (which also included the complete Kreisleriana, another source of inspiration for Schumann) by one of his Cavourite authors, E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Schumann dedicated the pieces to Fräulein Anna Robena Laidlaw, an accomplished 18-year-old Scottish pianist with whom Schumann had become good friends.

3 7

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Yes I realize I have been going hard on the Schumannposting today, it just happens

2 8

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Sometimes I look at how Robert Schumann was just out here writing music for and about a whole lotta women who were not his future wife and I just go man, what a real sloppy bitch of a guy that Robert was

3 5 44

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

I’m so glad we have this

a man in a black turtleneck stands in front of a window with perfection written on the bottom right

Alt: Perfection

media.tenor.com

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Just posted the videos in some replies but bluesky appears to be on the fritz and I can't find the posts now??

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

and I was so pleasantly surprised to find this video of @ericaannsipes.com playing the cadenza, which was super useful! www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfaq...

Clara Schumann's cadenza for 1st mvt. of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto

YouTube video by Erica Sipes

www.youtube.com

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

ok so here is the only recording with an actual orchestra that I could find

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqA6...

Solomon Cutner plays Beethoven Concerto N. 3 Op. 37 - 1. Allegro con brio (Cadenza by Clara Schumann

YouTube video by St Andrews Piano Tuition

www.youtube.com

1 1

🎹 sharon su @doodlyroses.com · 1d

Also lol at “she knew she wasn’t good enough for her audiences,” those “knowledgeable audiences” didn’t like Robert’s works at first and she bludgeoned them over the head with his pieces until she made them like him