Clara Schumann Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. Clara wrote that "composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound". At age fourteen she wrote her piano concerto, with some help from Robert Schumann, and performed it at age sixteen at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Mendelssohn conducting. As she grew older, however, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly,
Conrad Graf of standing up to the violence that Liszt inflicted on it during his more impassioned moments of playing. Friedrich Wieck wrote in his diary in during Liszt's 1838 visit to Vienna, "We heard Liszt today at Conrad Graf's who was sweating as his piano did not survive the great duel—Liszt remained the victor." Wieck described another concert on the same visit in which Liszt "destroyed" two Grafs, as well as an Erard piano lent to him by Sigismond Thalberg. In 1840, Graf gave one of his firm's grand pianos as a gift to the young piano virtuoso Clara Wieck (Friedrich's