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March will be chock-a-block with superb new Clarke recordings, one of them more than 30 years in the making.

LAWO Classics leads off with The Artist’s Secret, an absolutely fascinating recital by mezzo Bettina Smith and pianist Jan Willem Nelleke that features an unusual selection of Clarke’s songs—Infant Joy, June Twilight, and Eight O’Clock—along with pieces by Anna Cramer, Henriëtte Bosmans, Borghild Holmsen, Cecile Chaminade, Marguerite Canal, Poldowski, Lili Boulanger, and Luise Greger. The three Clarke pieces form a well-nigh perfect microcosm of her vocal-solo writing, with an unexpected but absolutely convincing bit of Sprechstimme in Eight O’Clock. The whole program is rich and challenging, and if you haven’t caught up with Poldowski or Bosmans, what’s keeping you? European release and worldwide download is set for February 26, with the CD available in the Western Hemisphere on April 9.

On March 12, Divine Art releases an album of twentieth- and twenty-first-century pieces for clarinet and strings, performed by the British chamber-ensemble Gemini and its director, clarinetist Ian Mitchell. The story of how this project progressed since Ian discovered Clarke’s Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale in 1989 is best told by Ian himself, in the album’s lavish and highly entertaining booklet. Suffice it to say that this performance of the piece, which also features violist Yuko Inoue on a thrillingly equal basis, is one of the best ever. As an added bonus, the booklet includes the first accurate transcription of Clarke’s handwritten de-facto program-note—an important contribution to the literature, since this was one of the few times in Clarke’s life when she explained so much as a note of her music. Readers who have been searching in vain for that “long fugato section” in the Allegro will be relieved to learn that Clarke actually wrote “tiny”—crystal-clear, right down to the crossed T and the dotted I. You can pre-order here or here.

On March 19, King’s College, Cambridge, releases Proud Songsters, a survey of English solo song performed by a knockout roster of singers (Michael Chance, Tim Mead, Lawrence Zazzo, Ruairi Bowen, James Gilchrist, Andrew Staples, Gerald Finley, Ashley Riches, and Mark Stone) and Simon Lepper, one of the world’s preëminent collaborative pianists—all of whom are King’s alumni. For Clarke aficionados, the pièce de résistance is Gilchrist’s tender, propulsive, emotionally specific account of The Seal Man, nearly half-a-minute faster than his previous recording, and hair-raisingly the better for it. With Britten’s Down by the Salley Gardens (Mead), Warlock’s Sleep (Stone), and Iain Bell’s riff on “Come away, death” (Zazzo), there are interesting comparisons to be made with Clarke’s settings of the same texts, for solo voice, vocal duet, and chorus, respectively. Stephen Banfield’s booklet-essay is a useful corrective for anyone who suffers from any lingering delusion that nineteenth- or early twentieth-century English song was some sort of hothouse-flower tended by sad maidens in darkened parlors with doors tight-shut, rather than what it was—a massive industry with a large, active market. You can pre-order here or here.

And more on the way. Clear your shelves.

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Dr. Leah Broad, of Christ Church, Oxford, whose work promises to mark a real turning-point in—dare we say it?—Clarke Studies, will be available to answer your questions about her current research, via Zoom, on Friday, February 12, 2021, at 10:00 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time (check here for your local equivalent, and lay in masses of caffeine if you’re anywhere in the Western Hemisphere).

You may remember Dr. Broad’s terrific paper on The Seal Man at last year’s conference of the Royal Musical Association, or her recent article about Dame Ethel Smyth in The Guardian, or the announcement of her book Quartet—of which Rebecca Clarke comprises a very exciting and glamorous one-fourth—due from Faber in 2023.

The Q&A on February 12, part of an interdisciplinary graduate seminar entitled The History of the Gendered Body, will focus on new ways of understanding Clarke, not as the victim of legend—a characterization that Clarke herself strenuously rejected—but as a self-willed, self-determined, self-managed professional who set her own course, made her own way, and forged a style all her own. In addition, Dr. Broad will share some of her latest thinking about Clarke’s enthusiasm for things Oriental, from her taste in fabrics to several of her most distinctive compositions.

Anyone may join the session, and admission is free. Sign up here, by clicking the “Mailing list” button near the top of the page.

See you there. We’ll be the bleary-eyed type with the steaming mug of Lavazza Gran Selezione and the relentlessly self-advertising cat, making a determined effort to follow Clarke’s sterling example, as practiced in Molokai, Hawaii, on July 19, 1923, while taking a day off from writing Rhapsody: “Waked at 4 a.m., got into riding togs & motored to the south west end of the island, where the horses met us for a cattle-drive. Rode up across the rough country nearly to the other side, driving an ever-increasing herd of cattle before us. There were 22 of us, counting the cowboys. Had some wonderful gallops, my horse took a ditch, & I chased a truant calf & got it. Very thrilled. After lunch motored to the sea & rested.”

Go ye and do likewise.