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SWAP’ra, the British artistic collaborative that seeks to “build a supportive community and to effect positive change for women and parents in opera,” with the ultimate goal of fostering “an environment in which a female CEO, Music Director, Artistic Director, Conductor, Composer or Librettist is no longer noteworthy,” has put on a mind-blowing 17-episode online festival featuring songs by a stunning array of female composers, performed by students at virtually every major music conservatory in the UK, comprising the Royal Welsh College of Music and Art, the National Opera Studio, the Guildhall School, the Trinity Laban Conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the Royal College of Music.

For Clarke aficionados, the big news is Episode 17, from Clarke’s old stomping grounds at the Royal College, featuring four of her earliest compositions as an independent adult composer: her first setting of a Yeats poem, and three songs to old Chinese texts, all dating from around 1910, and all performed from manuscript. Tears, one of the Chinese lyrics, has been recorded before (Guild GMCD 7208), but the other songs are making their first appearances before the general public.

The festival’s overall title is Forgotten Voices, and while we gently demur on Clarke’s behalf—caught up as we are in a massive trawl through her 113 years (and counting) of press-coverage, and having her fan-mail in hand—there’s bound to be a lot here that you will find delightfully new. We’ve got our eye on the Welsh program in Episode 1, and we hear great things about the Hedwige Chrétien cycle in Episode 16, but the whole shebang is available—gloriously free!—through April 5, so we’re determined to enjoy every moment of it, at least twice. Go ye and do likewise.

The most efficient overview of the repertoire is here, complete with composer bios and selected lyrics. The programs themselves are here.

Texts for the Clarke songs, in the sources she almost certainly consulted, are available online: in order of performance, One That Is Ever Kind (“The Folly of Being Comforted”), Return of Spring, Tears, and The Color [Clarke’s spelling] of Life.

If you hear “Foxy Lady” chords in any of this, you are not wrong: Clarke was using jazz inflections before the term itself was documented.

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Sorry not to have clogged your in-box for nearly a month, but we gave ourselves a writing-break. So here’s a quick catch-up on several noteworthy things that came in while we were doing a deep dive into Rebecca Clarke’s childhood.

Time-sensitive, because it live-streams only until April 16, is an extraordinarily beautiful performance of Clarke’s Poem for string quartet, by the equally extraordinary Carducci Quartet, at London’s Wigmore Hall. Here again, we can see Clarke’s wisdom in leaving this piece as a freestanding item—after that, what more could possibly be said? Poem begins at 28:25, flanked by Mendelssohn 6 and Shostakovich 2, both electric. Wigmore Hall’s programming over the past year has been a major reason for staying safe and staying alive, so be sure to follow the links under the video and contribute.

Available indefinitely, and definitely worth spending time with, again and again, is a transformative interpretation of Clarke’s Trio by the NZTrio, dating back to 2019 but just recently published in support of New Zealand musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the sheer beauty and focus of the playing, this performance is chiefly remarkable for bringing out the Trio’s commonly-overlooked Romanticism, which has the unexpected effect of revealing how unified—and how bracingly modern—the Finale is. It’s certainly not the only way to play the piece, but it’s one that you probably have never heard before, and won’t soon forget. We haven’t—in fact, we’ve put it up on our Video for one-click playing, at leisure.

While you’re there, have another listen at the thrilling performance of Clarke’s Sonata by Richard O’Neill and Jeremy Denk, and send good wishes to Richard, who just won the Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, for his eloquent account of Christopher Theofanidis’s Concerto For Viola And Chamber Orchestra. He gave an exceptionally nice acceptance-speech, too.

Finally, writing up the current rash of Seal Man recordings and live performances turned up some fascinating documentary and visual evidence, so we’ve put it all together in a new Gallery feature. Not to be a one-note or anything, but if you harbor any remaining illusion to the effect that Clarke was a dainty-dish who hung out with wet-rag pals, take a look at the cast of characters involved with The Seal Man, and—as we say in Brooklyn—fuggedaboudit!