On BBC Radio 3’s Record Review next weekend, host Andrew McGregor and Natasha Loges, Head of Postgraduate Programmes and Reader in Musicology at the Royal College of Music, will name five indispensable recordings by Rebecca Clarke, Lili Boulanger, Caterina Assandra, Fanny Mendelssohn, and a mystery-composer yet to be announced, and explain why you need to hear them. The program airs on Saturday, August 15, 2020, at 9:00 a.m. British Summer Time, and becomes available for streaming around noontime that same day (check here for your local equivalents).

We won’t know the repertoire until then, apart from the fact that Clarke will be represented by the Trio—plenty of rich possibilities there! Clarke, Mendelssohn, and Boulanger need no introduction, of course, but if Assandra’s name is the least bit unfamiliar to you, you ought to seize this opportunity to experience her exquisite concertato-style motets.

The program will be available for streaming-on-demand through Friday, September 18. Enjoy!

[Update: The mystery-composer turned out to be Minna Keal, and the indispensable recording of Clarke’s Trio was Chandos’s 2019 release by the Neave Trio. The other parts of the program were fascinating, too, in part because George Crumb’s delicious take on Chagall’s “The Painter,” from Metamorphoses (Book I): Ten Fantasy Pieces (after celebrated paintings) for amplified piano, composed just the other day, suggests that the world may finally have caught up with Rebecca Clarke’s extraordinary piano-writing. The section about Clarke begins at 1:06:30.]