The recent publication in England and simultaneous importation into this country of a nine-LP set on the Pearl label of recordings made by three pupils of Clara Schumann (1819-96) will doubtless excite interest among students and admirers of piano-playing.[1] It is not difficult to see why this should be so: Clara Schumann, of course, was the widow of the great Robert (1810-56), and a close friend over many years of Johannes Brahms; furthermore, she was by all accounts one of the great musicianly pianists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Because she was a renowned teacher, and because she gave lessons until her death in the mid-1890s, she taught several pianists who played professionally during the subsequent era of sound recording, and two of her pupils lived long enough to make private recordings at a time when tape recording made the capture of extended performances in lifelike sound possible.

It cannot be said that Clara Schumann’s pupils included any names likely to be familiar today, either through the memory of live performances or through phonograph records. According to the most extensive list of her pupils I have seen—that contained in Wilson Lyle’s recent and only partially satisfactory A Dictionary of Pianists(Schirmer Books, 1985)—the best-known ones included Richard Andersson, Leonard Borwick, Fanny Davies, Henry Eames, Ilona Eibenschütz, Adolf Frey, Carl Friedberg, Amina Goodwin, Clement Harris, Natalia Janotha, Louise Japha, Walter Lampe, Carolus Oberstadt, Edward Perry, Oscar da Silva, Anton Strelezky, Franklin Taylor, Lazzaro Uzielli,