A Musical Family!

I noticed a new album of Clara Schumann mentioned over at Alex Ross' site but when I followed the link I ended up discovering a whole family of classical musicians, the Kanneh-Masons. You will undoubtedly have heard of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2016. He is now twenty years old. But the pianist with the new Clara Schumann album on Decca is his sister, Isata Kanneh-Mason, twenty-three. You had better follow the family link above. There are seven sibling musicians in this family! What, no guitarists? I suspect we will be hearing from most of them in coming years.

I tagged this post "Bach family" simply because that is the only tag I have that mentions family. But music tends to run in families. The Bach family are simply the most famous. That family of musicians were active in Germany from the 1500s. Three of J. S. Bach's sons dominated composition in the next generation, just before Haydn and Mozart came on the scene. The Couperins were another famous family with both Louis and François achieving great renown as both composers and harpsichordists. Heck, my mother taught four sisters old-time fiddle playing and they went on to modest regional fame as a group.

Seven performers of professional level quality in one family is pretty unusual though! Let's have a listen. First, Sheku, who just played the Elgar Cello Concerto at this years Proms:

That is certainly impressive. You can also find his Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 on YouTube. But now let's listen to his sister Isata. Here she is playing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2.

Not a professional recording, so let's listen to the first movement of the Clara Schumann Sonata for Piano in G minor on the new Decca album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rpb5bZh8js

Also on YouTube is Isata's younger sister Jeneba, age fifteen, playing the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2:

Keep an eye on these kids!