All this week on Classic Drive, Lorcan will feature music from Hélène Grimaud's new album, For Clara.

Hélène Grimaud explores the rich universe of German Romanticism For Clara couples Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana Op. 16 with Brahms’s Intermezzi Op. 117 and Lieder und Gesänge Op. 32, featuring baritone Konstantin Krimmel.

"I've always had a special relationship with the German Romantics," says Hélène Grimaud (in a recent interview for Deutsche Welle).

That affinity is very much in evidence on her latest album, For Clara, which focuses not only on the pianist's own relationship with the music of both Robert Schumann and his protégé Brahms, but also on that which bound both men to pianist-composer Clara Schumann (née Wieck). Grimaud revisits Schumann’s Kreisleriana, a work she has known most of her life and recorded once before, pairing it with Brahms’s three Op. 117 Intermezzi and his Op. 32 set of nine songs.

Joining her for the latter is baritone Konstantin Krimmel, her musical partner on the Valentin Silvestrov album Silent Songs, released earlier this year. For Clara ends with the nine songs that make up Brahms's Op. 32. Composed in the early 1860s, they set poems by two orientalist poets, Georg Friedrich Daumer and August von Platen, both of whom were influenced by the medieval Persian poet Hafez. While all nine are written in the first person, there is no single narrative thread running through Brahms’s choice of poems, which perhaps explains why the set is rarely performed in full today. Together, Hélène Grimaud and Konstantin Krimmel movingly convey the themes of love, loss, devotion and disillusionment which are expressed by both words and music, and might in some ways have echoed the composer’s feelings towards Clara. The artists bring the album to a close with a beautiful interpretation of the ninth and final song, "Wie bist du, meine Königin" (My queen, you are so wondrous), a masterpiece of the Romantic repertoire.

Tune in at 5:20 everyday this week to hear a selection from this album on Lorcan Murray's Classic Drive.