Hélène Grimaud’s new DG release, ‘For Clara’, is a bouquet of works by the two composers closest to Clara Wieck Schumann: her husband Robert and their joint protégé, Johannes Brahms. This is her second recording of Kreisleriana. The first was originally released on Denon (9/89) and is still available as a MDG reissue. She also previously recorded Brahms’s Op 117 (Erato, 12/96), and both works exude an aura of long, intimate acquaintance. The German baritone Konstantin Krimmel, her superb collaborator in the nine songs of Brahms’s Op 32, was also her partner in ‘Silent Songs’, an album of Valentin Silvestrov songs released earlier this year.

Schumann wrote to Heinrich Dorn that the 1838 Kreisleriana was among those works that simply would not have existed were it not for Clara. Grimaud plunges headlong into Äusserst bewegt, the tempo pressed almost beyond what can be heard. Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch is beautifully contoured and sings full-heartedly, with a first intermezzo that is deliciously articulated, every phrase given life and breath, and a second that, recalling the opening, seems a bit frantic. The third piece, Sehr aufgeregt, is so brisk that some of its distinguishing character evaporates. The coda ends the piece in a fine fury. No 4, marked Sehr langsam, is appropriately calm and spacious, featuring some of the same superb voice-leading that will make the first Brahms Intermezzo so compelling. In the irritable and peevish No 5, Grimaud negotiates the mercurial shifts of affect masterfully, while the intimate and beguiling No 6, Sehr langsam, brooks no resistance. Arriving finally at the seventh and then at the concluding numbers of the cycle, Grimaud’s secure sense of the overarching architecture comes into focus in a performance that is fully conscious, deliberate and nothing if not original.

Following the manic intensity of some moments in Kreisleriana, the autumnal resignation and poise of the three Op 117 Intermezzos provide vivid contrast. The E flat Intermezzo is the occasion for some of the most beautiful voice-leading one may ever hope to hear in Brahms – so irresistible, in fact, that one is scarcely aware of the slightly calculated ritardandos of the cadential figures. Grimaud maintains the same velvety touch in the D flat Intermezzo, which speaks with crystalline clarity yet devoid of any hint of the thick muddiness that can encumber so many Brahms interpretations. That said, the breaking of hands, ie the non-simultaneity of treble and bass, becomes so pervasive that its expressive potential is quickly exhausted. The deeply felt wistfulness of the C sharp minor Intermezzo rounds off the set with unmitigated seriousness.

The songs are generally regarded as Brahms’s coming-of-age in the lied. They are settings of Georg Friedrich Daumer, the poet whom Brahms set more frequently than any other, and August von Platen, composed in the early 1860s. With only three of the nine songs in a major key, the overall impression is of pervasive melancholy. Together, Krimmel and Grimaud create exquisitely characterised vignettes, touching on love, abandonment, devotion and disillusion, perfectly proportioned and keenly expressive. Krimmel’s unaffected and direct articulation of the texts could scarcely be more apt, and the effortless unity of musical intent between singer and pianist is a joy to experience. This is music-making on a very high level.