Friedrich Kalkbrenner seriously intended to become Kalkbrenner's pupil, but he changed his mind after this encounter with the celebrated man: Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert Schumann, and herself an eminent pianist and composer, spent several months in Paris during the year 1839. She met many of the Parisian pianists, Kalkbrenner among them. In a letter home to her father, piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck, she wrote: German poet and satirist Heinrich Heine in his "Letters on Music from Paris (1840–47)" wrote with biting wit on musical life and musicians in the French capital. Kalkbrenner was the target of some of Heine’s more
Clara Ponty Clara Ponty Clara Ponty (born in Paris, France) is a French-American pianist, vocalist and pop and jazz composer. Ponty is the daughter of jazz violinist and composer Jean-Luc Ponty. Born in Paris but raised in Los Angeles since age four, she began studying violin and piano at the age of five. By the time she was eight, she had written her first piece. She participated in local competitions in Los Angeles and won her first award at age eleven. Clara Ponty continued her studies into her early teens when she was accepted into the prestigious music program at Interlochen Arts