Outstanding praise for Beatrice Rana and Philadelphia Orchestra's performance of Clara Schumann Piano Concerto

Beatrice Rana and Yannick Nézet-Séguin perform the Clara Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor with the Philadelphia Orchestra

The reviews are in! Critics are praising Beatrice Rana’s and Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra of Clara Schumann Piano Concerto.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:

Here in Verizon Hall, the work of the star pianist and future Mrs. Robert Schumann came with another recommendation: the advocacy of pianist Beatrice Rana, who took the work’s unusual form and inventive harmonic twists and turns and filled them in with emotional details of enormous punch.

The piece isn’t wall-to-wall wonderful, but Rana took those that were wonderful and made them especially so — like the beautifully expressive liberties with tempos she took in the first movement; and the pianist’s hushed, delicate handling of material in the long piano-alone stretch. Why conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin decided that he should conduct the pas de deux by Rana and cellist Hai-Ye Ni was unclear. It’s an episode of arresting intimacy likely unmatched in the repertoire, and the two instrumentalists needed no hand-holding to bring it off beautifully.

New York Classical Review wrote:

Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto is a work from when she was still Clara Wieck, the prodigy, written in her mid-teens, It’s a fascinating piece both in its weaknesses and strengths. In the standard three movements, fast-slow-fast, it doesn’t really have a cadenza, trading that for a second movement Romanze that is close to a piano solo. It’s also seriously lopsided, with a finale that’s too long in proportion to the previous music. The orchestral writing is nondescript.

And yet the piano part is superb, with deep musicality and great emotional sophistication—it’s the kind of music where one follows each line for how good it sounds on the piano, then is knocked sideways for how the mood changes drastically, and returns to the original feeling, within the space of two or three notes. 

One could not imagine hearing this music better than Rana played it. She produced a big, rounded sound, and took care to articulate every phrase, letting the elegance and substance of the music speak, no matter how fast or dense. The Romanze was gorgeous and deeply compelling, with moving emotions when principal cellist Hai-Ye Ni joined in with her accompanying line.