Schumann's Piano Concerto with Tim Horton

We are delighted to welcome Tim Horton to play the Schumann Piano Concerto at our concert on 8th March 2025. Tim is a founding member of Music in the Round’s Ensemble 360, founded in 2005 and resident at Sheffield’s Crucible Playhouse. Tim’s work includes solo performances as well as with the Leonora Trio, and Trio Meister Raro with Robert Plane and Rachel Roberts.

For Tim, this piano concerto is very special, describing Robert Schumann as a “musician’s musician”. Tim recalls he was about seven or eight years old when he first heard the piece but learnt it at about the age of 16 when he was a pupil at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. Peter Donohoe was booked to perform the concerto for the school’s anniversary concert and Tim played in rehearsals with the school orchestra.

“I was a sort of stand in in case Peter Donohoe couldn't do the concert”, Tim explained, but sadly for him, Peter Donohoe did make an appearance, so Tim’s first public performance of the concerto came later. During his career Tim has played this special piece many times, the last occasion being around 10 years ago.

Tim describes the Schumann concerto as having an odd genesis in that the first movement was initially a standalone piece which had other movements added later and includes many references to Clara Schumann. Tim notes the importance of the clarinet in Schumann’s music: “in particular in the first movement the piano duets with the clarinet for a lot of the time.”

Tim is mindful of some of the challenges that the concerto poses. “I think the hardest thing in the Schumann is the last movement because even though it is in 3/4, it has a lot of what we call hemiolas, so that’s big threes against the three inner beats. And it really throws orchestras – even professional orchestras find it difficult.”

Along with the Schumann concerto and solo performances in Sheffield and Wigmore Hall, Tim has been preparing the F Major Piano Trio for a concert he gave in Sheffield in February 2025 so has been thinking a lot about specific ideas about how to interpret Schumann’s musical themes and emotions.

As a soloist Tim is extremely busy, always thinking about how to interpret the music and keep it fresh. “I think the holy grail of classical music audiences is trying to get people between the age of 18 and 55. And they are now coming. And I think it's a bit of a myth that audiences don't want new music. I think we need to be commissioning as much new music as we can afford to do.”

“I've done a lot with Sheffield Chamber Orchestra in the past, but not for quite a few years now. It’s a real pleasure to come back.”