Grimaud has known Schumann's Kreisleriana for most of her life. "You can spend a lifetime with a piece like this and always discover something new," the pianist says. Her special relationship with the German Romantics is evident on her album "For Clara," which focuses not only on the pianist's relationship with the music of Robert Schumann and his protégé Brahms, but in particular on the two composers' connection to Clara Schumann.

Grimaud recorded Brahms' Songs and Cantos op. 32. with baritone Konstantin Krimmel , who was already her musical partner on the album Silent Songs, about which BBC Music Magazine wrote: "Konstantin Krimmel and Hélène Grimaud deserve the highest praise for their confident and unaffected performance of this beautiful, dreamlike music." Together, Grimaud and Krimmel movingly convey the themes of love, loss, devotion, and disillusionment, expressed in both words and music.