In his warm appreciation for Clara Schumann’s piano works‚ Gerd Nauhaus’s essay claims that ‘it would be very unjust…to see her relatively small oeuvre as merely an echo or even as a lacklustre reflection of [Robert] Schumann’s music.’ That’s easy enough to say. But after nearly four hours of only intermittently pleasurable listening I would say that the only injustice in the kind of assessment Nauhaus deplores is that it fails to mention all the other influences on Clara. In the first work on these three discs‚ the Sonata in G minor of 1841­42‚ her husband’s A minor Concerto is looking benignly on‚ together with Schubert‚ Mendelssohn and Weber. Prior to that‚ much of Clara’s salonish writing derives from Chopin; and later on there are signs of close encounters of the Brahmsian kind. Not that there is nothing to charm and fascinate here. There are rhapsodically dreamy pieces like the second of the Soirées musicales (Robert was so taken with the fifth of these that he used its theme to kick off his Davidsbündlertänze) and the Quatre pièces caractéristiques‚ Op 5‚ are a delight. Like most of the music here‚ these were the product of a fabulously talented teenager. What heights she might have risen to‚ given more favourable life circumstances‚ we can only guess. As Joan Chissell noted in January 1993‚ the recording quality is only fair. The piano is too forwardly balanced and too much pedal­thump has been captured. Even allowing for that‚ Jozef de Beenhouwer is not the subtlest of exponents. He copes well enough with the considerable demands of such tours de force as the Valses romantiques‚ but his fortissimo throughout the three discs grates on the ear‚ and he thuds his way through the Bellini Variations‚ obliterating any pleasure one might take in their affinities with Robert’s Etudes symphoniques. A useful library acquisition then‚ but it is not hard to imagine others making the case for Clara Schumann more eloquently.