"Performing Clara Schumann": CU Music

To celebrate the bicentennial of Clara Schumann (neé Wieck)’s birth, the conference “Performing Clara Schumann: Keyboard Legacies and Feminine Identities in the Long Romantic Tradition”, November 16-17, 2019, will present a myriad of interpretive frameworks for understanding the historical, cultural, and technological milieu surrounding the virtuosa’s life and work. Conference events, ranging from individual paper presentations, to lecture recitals, to hands-on workshops, are particularly invested in reconfiguring the feminist outlook surrounding the various (keyboard) networks of Clara Schumann’s world and those inspired by her in subsequent times. In addition, this event seeks not only to celebrate the composer’s historic and musical achievements, but also to rethink her profound imprint on Romantic, post- (and ultra-) “Romantic” art culture. 

Among invited guests is keynote speaker Natasha Loges (Royal College of Music), Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers (University of Ottawa), Styra Avins, R. Larry Todd (Duke) and Katharina Uhde (Valparaiso University). The Conference Keynote (4:45 PM) will be held in the AD White Guerlac Room, and most Saturday events will take place in Barnes Hall, culminating in a concert (8 PM) which features performances from pianist David Keep (Eastman) and violinist Soo Yeon Kim, pianists Junghwa Lee, Theodora Serbanescu-Martin, and Richard Valitutto, as well as other students and faculty from the Cornell Music Department and beyond. The concert will also include historically allusive staging and feature original nineteenth-century clothing items from the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection with assistantship from Denise Green (Department of Fiber Science And Apparel Design) and Helen Mclallen. The Sunday events will include an improvisation workshop led by Professor Roger Moseley, and throughout the conference, there will be an open house at 726 University Ave, the hub of Cornell’s new Center for Historical Keyboards. 

This event is jointly sponsored by the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, the Department of Music, the Cornell Council for the Arts, the Institute for German Cultural Studies (IGCS), the Department of German Studies, and the Society for the Humanities.