Lecture-Recital:
Between Fantasy and Romance: Revisiting the Schumanns' Musical and Romantic Worlds
On the bicentennial of Clara Wieck Schumann’s birthday, this
lecture-recital explores her compositional relationship with her husband,
Robert Schumann. Both Clara and Robert drew inspiration from each other, and
this presentation reveals the musical connections between Robert Schumann’s
Romances for Oboe (or Violin) and Piano, Op. 94 and Clara Schumann’s Romances
for Violin and Piano, Op. 22.
Program
Lecture:
“Between Fantasy and Romance: Revisiting the Schumanns’ Musical and Romantic Worlds”
Robert Schumann: Romances, Op. 94
Emily Shyr, oboe
Elizabeth Loparits, piano
Clara Schumann: Romances, Op. 22
Clark Spencer, violin
Bettsy Curtis, piano
Artist biography
Emily
Shyr entered the PhD program in Historical Musicology at Duke University in the
fall of 2018. Prior to attending Duke, she earned her MPhil in American History
at the University of Cambridge (2018), and received her bachelor's degree from
Columbia University (2017), where she majored in music and history. Her past
experience includes internships at W.W. Norton & Company, the Gilder
Lehrman Institute of American History and the Atlanta History Center.
An
active oboist, Shyr was principal oboist of the Cambridge University Sinfonia
and the Columbia University Orchestra, as well as a member of the New York
Youth Symphony and Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. She has performed at
Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, King's College Chapel, and toured with the New
York Youth Symphony on their inaugural tour to Buenos Aires. She has studied
with and participated in master classes given by oboists of the Atlanta,
Boston, Houston, Baltimore and Philadelphia Symphony Orchestras, and currently
studies with Joseph Robinson, former principal oboist of the New York
Philharmonic.
Shyr's musical interests include the music of Franz Schubert, the intersection between
the genres of instrumental music and lieder, intertextuality, historicism,
German modernism, and the late works of Richard Strauss. In regard to American
history, her master's dissertation focused on African-American soldiers'
experiences of racism in American military training camps during World War II,
and how those were transported to the European theater of war. She has also
researched racially discriminatory policies in New Deal programs, as well as
the advent of free labor in the Reconstruction period and slavery.