Barring a few arrangements and a single counterpoint exercise, every note that Clarke left in a complete, performable state has been recorded, and is either currently available from Presto Classical and other fine dealers throughout the world, or well worth searching out on the resale market. The discography that follows is by no means comprehensive: it is limited to current recordings of particular interest, and to recordings of historical significance, excluding private and pirated issues. Links are provided where possible. See our Shop page for additional information on the most important recent releases.
THE MONUMENT
Nothing embodies Clarke’s achievement better or more fully than The Complete Songs (Signum Classics SIGCD940; 2025), which presents one of the greatest contributions to the vocal literature of the twentieth century in very nearly perfect performances by Kitty Whately, Nicholas Phan, Gweneth Ann Rand, Roderick Williams, and the phenomenal pianist Anna Tilbrook, with contributions by Max Baillie and members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society in pieces with stringed instruments. The two-disc set contains all of Clarke’s music for one or two voices, including her earliest compositions, her duets, her arrangements for voice and violin, and a whole raft of world-premiere recordings, including her epic Binnorie: A Ballad. I cannot pretend to be objective, or even rational, about this project—I brought the principals together, edited a good deal of the music, wrote the main liner-notes, and wept with joy and wonder through much of the second recording-session—but if this doesn’t emerge as one of those “Great Recordings of the Century,” there is no justice in the Universe. If you don’t believe me, believe Gramophone. For links to full details and background information, see the entry for this title on our Shop page.
THE PIONEERS
Historically, however, pride of place must go to violist Josef Koďousek and pianist Květa Novotná, and to four visionary artist-producers—Marnie Hall, Michael Ponder, Lynn Joiner, and Teresa Sterne—who sought out Clarke’s works in her final years or shortly after her death, and made revelatory recordings that brought her public profile to a whole new level.
Koďousek and Novotná’s recording of the Sonata (Supraphon 1111 2694 G; 1980), made in Prague only a few months before Clarke’s death, appears to have been the first recording of any of Clarke’s instrumental works, and it is a beauty, with a near-perfect mix of fire and poetry and a command of the piece’s complex rhythmic transitions that has never been equaled, and rarely even approached.
Hall produced the first recording of the Trio (Leonarda LPI 103; 1980) in a riveting performance by Suzanne Ornstein, James Kreger, and Virginia Eskin, and followed it up with Songs of American Composers: Themes of Nature, Drama, and Solitude (Leonarda LPI 120; 1983), a concept-album with Kristine Ciesinski, John Ostendorf, and Shirley Seguin, featuring premiere recordings of “Down by the Salley Gardens,” “June Twilight,” “A Dream,” “The Seal Man,” “God Made a Tree,” and “The Donkey” (the latter two performed from Clarke’s manuscripts), interleaved with songs by Lee Hoiby and Ellen Zwilich.
The first (of an eventual four) of Ponder’s Clarke survey-albums (British Music Society BMS 404; 1983) came out shortly thereafter, with another fine performance of the Trio (Raymond Ovens, George Ives, and John Alley) and a generous selection of songs (Graham Trew and John Alley) that began to suggest the full range of Clarke’s vocal writing, including premiere recordings of “The Cherry Blossom Wand,” “The Aspidistra,” “Eight O’Clock,” and “Tiger, Tiger,” the latter from manuscript.
Joiner produced a landmark survey of Clarke’s music with viola by Boston Symphony Orchestra co-principal Patricia McCarty (Northeastern NR 212; 1985), comprising the first American recording of the Sonata and the first recording anywhere of the Passacaglia on an Old English Tune (both with Virginia Eskin), along with premiere recordings of Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale (with Martha Babcock) and Two Pieces for Viola and Cello (with Peter Hadcock). Joiner also reconfigured his entire production-concept at the last moment, in order to accommodate a set of liner-notes that came in at least five times too long for the space provided, but represented the most complete and authoritative account of Clarke’s life and career then available, and for some years thereafter.
Sterne’s deeply-researched, beautifully-mounted Songs of America: On Home, Love, Nature, and Death (Nonesuch 79178-1; 1988) was one of Jan de Gaetani and Gilbert Kalish’s finest achievements in the studio, which is to say that it is one of the great recordings of the twentieth century. Their performance of “Lethe” (another premiere) is definitive.
ESSENTIAL COLLECTIONS
Michael Ponder produced three more survey-albums, together comprising virtually the whole of Clarke’s chamber music, apart from the Sonata and the Trio, and absolutely the whole of her music for vocal ensembles. Dutton CDLX 7105 (2000) includes compelling performances of Rhapsody, Epilogue, and the cello version of the Passacaglia on an Old English Tune (Justin Pearson); Midsummer Moon, Chinese Puzzle, and the violin Lullaby (Lorraine McAslan); and Ponder’s own viola-playing in Morpheus and the viola Lullaby of 1909. Dutton CDLX 7132 (2003) adds premiere recordings of the violin sonatas (McAslan), Three Movements for Two Violins and Piano (McAslan and David Juritz), Dumka (McAslan and Ponder), and the string-quartet movements (Flesch Quartet). Ian Jones, a major advocate of Clarke’s music in his own right, is the brilliant pianist on both discs, and his performance of Cortège is a highlight of the earlier release.
In between these two discs, Ponder produced Geoffrey Webber’s magisterial Complete Choral Music of Rebecca Clarke (ASV Digital CD DCA 1136; 2003)—a slight misnomer, in that the disc also includes beautiful performances of Clarke’s six duets for voices and piano—with the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and a roster of finely-attuned soloists.
Kenneth Martinson’s viola-based collection of instrumental chamber music, with pianists Christopher Taylor and Andrea Molina, and the Julstrom String Quartet (Centaur CRC 2847; 2007), recapitulates much of the repertoire from Ponder’s Dutton releases, while adding I’ll Bid My Heart Be Still, Combined Carols, and the viola version of Chinese Puzzle. The liner-notes contain many factual errors, but the performances are very fine—deeply committed but (where appropriate) fleet and good-humored.
Vinciane Béranger’s survey of the principal pieces featuring viola (Aparté AP289, 2022) sets a new standard: based on a deep study of Clarke’s manuscripts, it boasts gorgeous, impassioned performances, including a definitive take on Dumka, the only recorded performance to notice (and observe) Clarke’s scribbled-in timing for Chinese Puzzle, the world-première recording of Irish Melody (see below, under title), and brilliantly detailed sound.
Martin Ruman’s disc (Pavlik PA 0171-2-131, 2020, with Alena Hučková) gives fine accounts of nearly all the pieces for viola and piano, beautifully recorded, including perhaps the noblest account of the Sonata’s slow movement ever committed to disc.
The Cloths of Heaven: Songs and Chamber Works (Gamut GAMCD 534; 1992, reissued 2000 as Guild GMCD 7208) combines a nearly-comprehensive survey of Clarke’s songs with piano (Patricia Wright and Kathron Sturrock) and songs for voice and violin (Wright and Jonathan Rees), along with Midsummer Moon and Chinese Puzzle (Rees and Sturrock). Here again, the documentation is often faulty, but the performances are strikingly good. Full texts are provided.
The piano pieces—the solos, that is, not forgetting that Clarke was always noted for the brilliance of her keyboard-writing and the fact that her piano-parts are never mere “accompaniments”—are beautifully served on disc. Ian Jones’s Cortège (in Dutton CDLX 7105, 2000; see above) is essential, but Simon Callaghan (Lyrita SRCD.408, 2022) serves up magnificent accounts of all three pieces, along with the complete piano music of Clarke’s fascinating colleague William Busch, for whom she wrote Cortège, and Benjamin Engeli’s Serenade (Prospero PROSP0121, 2025) goes nearly the same distance, with the Theme and Variations and the delicious arrangement of Bach’s “Esurientes,” from the Magnificat in D, capping a program that includes luscious genre-pieces by Amy Beach and Agathe Backer Grøndahl. You simply cannot go wrong here—Clarke’s piano pieces can sound a bit pinpoint at first, but they grow on you, and you start to feel how rich they are in substance, whatever they may deny you in empty calories. And if you can get through the final variation without melting, or the “Esurientes” without feeling filled to repletion with good things, there’s something wrong with you, and you need to consult a specialist.
INDIVIDUAL PIECES
The Aspidistra
If you’re not already grinning, you may want to move along to the next item—it’s a British thing; you probably wouldn’t understand. On the other hand, you might give it a shot, because “The Aspidistra” is the improbable hit among Clarke’s pieces, the only one that never went out of print, even temporarily, during Clarke’s long lifetime. All of the available performances are good, but Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Graham Johnson, in their magnificent In Praise of Woman: 150 Years of English Women Composers (Hyperion CDA66709, 1994; reissued as CDH55159, 2004; see below, under “Essential Context”), bring a special note of genteel tragedy to the proceedings, while Sarah Walker and Roger Vignoles (CRD 3473; 1991) earn extra points for their perfectly dreadful sincerity.
Ave Maria
This little motet has proved to be Clarke’s sheet-music best-seller to date. The beautiful account in the Gonville & Caius collection (ASV Digital CD DCA 1136, 2003; see above) is the best all around, but Blossom Street’s performance, led by Hilary Campbell (Naxos 8.573991; 2019), captures the piece’s essential mystery, and has the added advantage of following the world-premiere recording of a glorious piece by Jane Joseph, who advised Clarke on her choral writing and kitchen-tested some of her pieces.
When sung by girls, words like “Mater” become touchingly literal, and the little caesurae that Clarke put around “Jesus” suddenly seem to embody that heart-stopping moment of wonder, love, and shock that any self-respecting daughter is bound to experience when confronted with the subsequent fruit of her mother’s womb. Two recordings, both from Cambridge University—which, in 2008, broke 900 years of tradition to found the first college-based choir for girls in the UK, at St Catharine’s, and recently added a second, at Pembroke—convey this aspect of the piece beautifully: the St Catharine’s choir, ranging in age from 8 to 15, with apparently artless sincerity and directness (Resonus RES10170; 2016), and the Pembroke group, aged 11 to 18 (reinforced on the low-notes by members of the Chapel Choir), with great subtlety of tone and revelatory phrasing (Signum Classics SIGCD642; 2020). Both point up Clarke’s unusual choice of text—following Palestrina’s example, she set an alternative ending that anticipates, not “the hour of our death,” but a radiant vision of the Blessed Virgin in Heaven, where we may hope someday to see her with our own eyes—and this, in turn, validates Clarke’s wisdom in settling on the simplest, most diatonic version of the final phrase, after much indecision and hacking about.
The Cloths of Heaven
Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton’s extraordinary Come to Me in My Dreams: 120 Years of Song from the Royal College of Music (Chandos CHAN 10944; 2018) contains only this one piece by Clarke, but it’s one of Clarke’s greatest, and the performance is magnificent. The recital as a whole shows better than any amount of exegesis where Clarke came from as a composer, and the creative environment in which she flourished. It should also lay to rest any number of academic canards, among them the notion that there was anything unusual or self-limiting in Clarke’s fondness for lullabies (Britten, many times over), songs about sleep and/or death (Parry, Howells, Holst, Bridge, Moeran, Britten), nature-pieces with evocative poetic titles (Stanford, Muriel Herbert, Ireland, Somervell, Gibbs, Moeran, Gurney), or quiet endings (passim). With Parry’s “Weep You No More, Sad Fountains,” Dunhill’s “The Cloths of Heaven,” and Britten’s “Cradle Song,” direct comparison with Clarke’s settings is possible, and Clarke stands out for her lightness of touch and economy of means, demonstrating—to paraphrase Howells on Bridge—how her “pronounced aptitude for chamber-music performance powerfully affected the whole process of [her] thought.”
Dumka
Pianist Ian Jones made the first playing-edition of this piece, and the experience shows in the vivid detail and contrapuntal depth of his performance with Lorraine McAslan and Michael Ponder (Dutton CDLX 7132; 2003), and also in its smoking intensity—for all its subtle layering, it is still more than half-a-minute faster than its nearest rivals, Jay Zhong/Kenneth Martinson/Andrea Molina (Centaur CRC 2847; 2007) and Hélène Collerette/Vinciane Béranger/Dana Ciocarlie (Aparté AP289, 2022). The latter are beautifully played and very powerful, especially in the spooky fadeout ending, but they probably represent an outer limit for timing: the other recordings in the current catalogue, each even longer by a minute or more, lose force and interest long before they end. If passion’s your thing, go with Collerette/Béranger/Ciocarlie—no question, hands down, shut the windows and pull the blinds.
Epilogue
It’s hard to imagine why Raphaela Gromes and Julian Riem bothered to include this piece in their celebrated anthology Femmes (Sony Classical 19658710712; 2023), having seen fit to rewrite Clarke’s ending, and then to tag the whole business to a liner-note that’s reductive almost to the point of insult. Others have taken considerable liberties with Epilogue as to tempo (Katharina Deserno/Nenad Lečić, Kaleidos Musikeditionen KAL6317-2; 2017) or tessitura (Raphael Wallfisch/John York, Lyrita SRCD.354; 2016), but replacing Clarke’s transformative final dissolve to major with a platitudinous, funeral-march minor is a whole different level of—well, of something. The beautiful account by Justin Pearson and Ian Jones, on the earlier Dutton collection (CDLX 7105; see above, under “Essential Collections”), remains the benchmark, although Catherine Wilmers and Jill Morton (Divine Art DDX 21134; 2025) have much to offer—a spacious, passionate performance of Epilogue, set within a rewarding program of pieces by British women, most of whom were Clarke’s contemporaries.
Infant Joy
Susanne Mentzer’s recital-disc The Eternal Feminine (Koch International Classics 3-7506-2 HI; 2001) includes five of Clarke’s best songs, all done with the warmth and charm that this great theatre-artist has always been treasured for. But Mentzer’s performance of “Infant Joy” is something special: not even a minute-and-a-half long, it is perfect, and contains a world. Pianist Craig Rutenberg is predictably magnificent throughout a substantial, richly varied program.
Irish Melody (“Emer’s Farewell to Cucullain”) for viola and cello
The world-première recording of this recently-discovered piece—inescapably, the headline-event in Vinciane Béranger’s survey of the viola music (Aparté AP289, 2022; see above, under “Essential Collections”)—is almost heartbreakingly beautiful. There’s not much to it—it’s two slow passes at the tune better known as “Londonderry Air,” or “Danny Boy”—but what there is, is choice. You will be left in absolutely no doubt as to why Clarke’s audiences brought her bouquets of flowers.
Lullaby for violin and piano
Rachel Barton Pine and Matthew Hagle do a beautiful job with this piece on their wildly successful album Violin Lullabies (Cedille CDR 90000 139; 2013), where it sits very comfortably between Ravel and Schubert, and not too far from Ysaÿe, Clarke’s childhood idol. Lorraine McAslan and Ian Jones take a very different approach on the earlier Dutton collection (CDLX 7105; see above, under “Essential Collections”), going right to the heart of what Calum MacDonald aptly called “a haunting, uneasy miniature.”
Midsummer Moon
It’s easy to underestimate this piece, if only because of its title, which even Clarke thought was a bit dopey—”I’m calling it ‘Midsummer Moon,'” she wrote in her diary, “which is the best title I can find that describes it.” For all that, it’s an intoxicating, passionate six minutes of music, with one of the best nightingales in the repertoire—”better, after all, than Raspighi’s [sic] gramophone,” as an early reviewer pointed out. There are several excellent recordings: Rees/Sturrock and McAslan/Jones (1992 and 2000, respectively; see above, under “Essential Collections”), Elvira Bekova/Eleonora Bekova (Chandos CHAN 9844; 2000), and Laura Kobayashi/Susan Keith Gray (Albany TROY372; 2000). McAslan/Jones achieve an ideal balance of delicacy and passion. Daniela Kohnen’s arrangement for viola can’t possibly duplicate the original’s gorgeous sheen, but it’s musically compelling on its own terms (with Holger Blüder; Coviello Classics 50202, 2001).
Morpheus
Paul Coletti was the first great exponent of Morpheus after Clarke’s time, and it was his advocacy that led to the piece’s publication in 2001. His video of Morpheus—a best-seller in Japan—is one of the Great White Whales of the Clarke discography, but his CD English Music for Viola (Helios CDA66687; 1993, reissued 2001 as CDH55085), with Leslie Howard, remains the benchmark audio-only performance. Aloysia Friedmann’s The First 10 Years (Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival OICMF 0523; 2007) offers something unique—an evocative performance on Clarke’s own viola, beautifully supported by Jon Kimura Parker.
Passacaglia on an Old English Tune
There are many recordings of Clarke’s original version for viola and piano in the current catalogue, but only three of her alternate version for cello, of which the latest, by Iris van Eck and Arielle Vernède (Donemus Musicians’ Voice DMV076, download only; 2024), will rip your head off, and rightly so, bearing in mind that the titular “tune” is a Veni Creator—one of the grandest, purest, most complete and all-encompassing spiritual utterances in Western literature—ending with a ringing, full-throated Trinitarian doxology. Justin Pearson/Ian Jones (Dutton CDLX 7105; 2000) have a similar understanding of the piece, but take more than minute longer to get there. Raphael Wallfisch/John York (Lyrita SRCD.354; 2016) take a lighter approach, with added Baroque-ish mordents. Eck/Vernède may not be to every taste as a performance, but as an act of worship it has no equal.
Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale
This mesmerizing suite for clarinet and viola has always been effective on disc, even in performances that exaggerate the written tempi, as virtually all of them do in one way or another. The best are Julian Farrell/Michael Ponder (Dutton CDLX 7105; 2000), Kelly Burke/Scott Rawls (Centaur CRC 2626; 2002, worth pursuing on the secondary market), and Ian Mitchell/Yuko Inoue (Métier/Divine Art MSV 28608; 2021). The latter was recorded back in 1995, but you couldn’t tell it from the freshness and extraordinarily fine detail of the sound. The performance is very nearly perfect—a true marriage of equals—especially in the Allegro, where Mitchell and Inoue somehow intuited that Clarke not only enjoyed the occasional crudity, but sometimes positively relied upon it. 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 when Clarke explained so much as a note of her music. Anyone who’s been searching in vain for that “long fugato section” in the Allegro will be relieved to learn that Clarke actually wrote “tiny”—crystal-clear for what it is, right down to the crossed t and the dotted i. (Full disclosure: I contributed visual materials and fact-checking to this release, but the end-product is all theirs, and very nicely done, too.)
Rhapsody
For a piece that remained in manuscript until 2020, Rhapsody has been extraordinarily present in broadcast and recording studios, from Moray Welsh and Andrew Ball (BBC, 1987), to Justin Pearson and Ian Jones (Dutton CDLX 7105, 2000), to Raphael Wallfisch and John York (Lyrita SRCD.354; 2016), and most recently to Lionel Handy and Jennifer Hughes (Lyrita SRCD.383, 2019). To be honest, we’re still trying to come to terms with this powerful but elusive piece, so we’ll defer discussion of the recordings until another day. In the meantime, you can’t go wrong with any of them.
The Seal Man
Sarah Wegener’s performance with Götz Payer (Avi-music 42 6008553374 9; 2017) is one of the finest things in the Clarke catalogue: flamingly theatrical, yet sung with unfailing beauty of tone, it reveals a tiny Tristan, overwhelming in its passion, powerful out of all proportion to its length, and all done—as Clarke said of Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge—”with such simple means.” Close the door and turn off your devices: what Wegener does with the word “calling” is worth the price of the disc, and Payer’s work is poetry itself. When the moon makes a track on the sea, and the lovers walk down it, it is truly “like a flame before them.” Words fail.
Sarah Walker and Roger Vignoles (CRD 3473; 1991) take a different approach, remembering that this is not a music-drama but part of a complex narrative spun out by an old woman of the village: their performance has adult distance and a sort of flickering, compassionate irony to it, but it’s just as powerful, in its way, as Wegener/Payer’s. What Walker does with the word “drowned” is beyond belief, and Vignoles is, as always, the perfect partner.
We’re still chewing over the current crop of recordings—all of them spectacular in one way or another—but you can get an idea of them on our Shop page. Here, again, you can’t go wrong. Details to follow.
Shy One
Povla Frijsh was not everyone’s cup of tea, even in her prime—Clarke described her, with a tiny near-grimace, as “a sort of diseuse“—but Frijsh’s 1940 RCA Victor recording of “Shy One,” with the great Celius Doughterty at the piano, is the first known commercial release of any of Clarke’s works, and a conspicuous item in Frijsh’s two-volume survey of the art song, which Gramophone hailed as a project “of the greatest importance imaginable,” containing “the greatest piece of dramatic singing on record.” The entire set is included in Povla Frijsh: The Complete Recordings (Pearl CD GEMM CDS 9095; 1992). Clarke left no known record of how she felt about Frijsh’s interpretation of “Shy One,” but Frijsh’s recordings certainly show what Clarke was up to with “The Donkey,” which she custom-crafted to play to Frijsh’s strengths, breaking the text into small rhetorical units, each strongly characterized and cleanly articulated, and enveloping the solo line in a cloud of sardonic dissonance, so that any passing flaw of intonation might pass as pitched speech.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Graham Johnson, in their recital-disc In Praise of Woman: 150 Years of English Women Composers (Hyperion CDA66709, 1994; reissued as CDH55159, 2004; see below, under “Essential Context”), have no such problems: their performance of “Shy One” is as close to perfect as I ever expect to hear, especially in its supremely fluent handling of Clarke’s giddy quintuple meter, which alone is worth the price of the disc.
Sonata
If there’s ever been a bad performance of this piece on disc, it hasn’t come my way, and with about forty recordings of the original viola version in circulation somewhere in the world, it’s embarras de richesse, and there’s something for every taste. Koďousek/Novotná (Supraphon 1111 2694 G; 1980) and Coletti/Howard (Helios CDA66687; 1993, reissued 2001 as CDH55085) are classics, the former for its exquisite command, the latter for its emotional depth and a jaw-dropping account of the scherzo. Other performances in the current catalogue that I keep coming back to include, in chronological order, Vidor Nagy/Günter Schmidt (Audite 95.424; 1991) with its full-throated Romanticism, reminding us how faithful Clarke remained to her nineteenth-century roots, even at her most progressive; Ralph de Souza/Martin Roscoe (ASV CD DCA 932, 1995; here and here), for a gossamer scherzo worthy of Berlioz, and a powerful, unusually tight-knit account of the finale; Barbara Westphal/Jeffrey Swann (Bridge 9109; 2001), electrifying, especially in its transition to the finale; Daniela Kohnen/Holger Blüder (Coviello Classics 50202; 2001), delicate and probing, building to a conclusion of overwhelming power, the whole deeply informed by Kohnen’s study of primary sources; Barbara Buntrock/Daniel Heide (Avi-music 4260085533046; 2014), a lovely performance on a disc that offers an opportunity to replay the Sonata’s deadlock with the Bloch Suite at the 1919 Coolidge competition, and then to compare the two of them to that year’s other great viola-piece, Hindemith’s Sonata, Op. 11, No. 4; Martin Outram/Julian Rolton (Nimbus Alliance NI6334; 2016), which traces continuities with sonatas by Stanford and Ireland; and Martin Ruman/Alena Hučková (Pavlik PA 0171-2-131, 2020), with its magnificent account of the slow movement.
Of the latest entries, three stand out: Dana Zemtsov/Anna Fedorova (Channel Classics CD CCS 42320; 2020) not only grounds the Sonata within the context of its French antecedents, but treats the instruments as equal partners, thus revealing how much matter there is throughout the gorgeous textures; Vinciane Béranger/Dana Ciocarlie (Aparté AP289, 2022; see above, under “Essential Collections”) finds a strain of ardent longing lurking behind the opening movement’s impetuosity, and absolute deviltry in the scherzo (video here); and Timothy Ridout/James Baillieu (Harmonia Mundi HMM 905376.77, 2024; see below, under “Essential Context”) shows how bracingly modern the whole thing was—and is.
(An alternative take on the field, recently published in BBC Music Magazine, is well worth considering, as well.)
The cello version—which, like all of Clarke’s alternate instrumentations, is a carefully-considered freestanding work, not just a transcription—has also been well served on disc, bearing out one of Clarke’s most perceptive contemporaneous critics, who assigned the Sonata “a foremost place among the best written for ‘cello and piano.” Pamela Frame’s elegant premiere recording with Barry Snyder (Koch International Classics 7281; 1994), long out of print, can sometimes be found on the resale market. More recent recordings cover a wide range of expression, from the directed composure of Alexander Baillie and John Thwaites (Somm CD 251-2; 2013), through Raphael Wallfisch and John York’s ardent lyricism (Lyrita SRCD.354; 2016), to Natalie Clein and Christian Ihle Hadland’s rolling thunder (Hyperion CDA68253; 2019), featuring a rocket-scherzo to rival Coletti/Howard’s. But far and away the most compelling, the best-played, and the best-recorded is the performance by Wojciech Fudala and Michał Rot on Dux 1919 (2023), where it is preceded by Fudala’s mesmerizing transcription of Clarke’s song The Cloths of Heaven. This is music-making at an extraordinarily high level, and you will probably find yourself coming back to it again and again.
The account by Noémie Raymond and Zhenni Li-Cohen (Leaf Music LM295, 2024) is in much the same league as concerns the cello version, but in a class of its own in terms of the piece itself. By taking what seems at first like a startling amount of time over the quieter, simpler, and more lyrical passages, Raymond and Li-Cohen reveal an astonishing richness of counterpoint, and a nobility, even a grandeur, of tone that the piece’s impetuous frame generally obscures. And Clarke’s markings bear them out: langoroso, for example, does not mean “keep this moving, because the soloist has eleven bars’ rest,” and appassionato does not compulsively imply “faster.” There are a million ways to play the Sonata—Clarke always insisted, “Do it your way, not mine”—but this one needs to be considered by anyone attempting the piece, on any instrument.
Sonatas for Violin
It’s almost inconceivable that these are student works, representing Clarke’s first attempts at sonata form and her first full-length, multi-movement concert work. They have been remarkably fortunate on record. The benchmark remains the propulsive McAslan/Jones, on the second Dutton collection (Dutton CDLX 7132, 2003; see “Essential Collections,” above), but Sofia Yatsyuk and Meagan Milatz (Silent Voices, Intertwined Paths, 2025) are even more powerful—sometimes hair-raisingly so—in a beautifully-thought-out reading that benefits at every point from Yatsyuk’s deep study of Clarke’s manuscripts and papers. If you can get through their account of the Andante of the D-major sonata without tears, then you have no soul.
Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel (OehmsClassics OC1731, 2024) offer great warmth, a gorgeous recording, and acute sensitivity to Clarke’s sometimes breathtaking lyrical counterpoints. The pairing is unusual—the Sonata for viola, with the same players—and arranging the pieces in reverse chronological order reveals the sonata-movement in G as a fully-sufficient freestanding work. You see why Clarke and Stanford decided to leave it alone—after that, what more could be said?
There Is No Rose
There’s only one recording of Clarke’s ravishing lower-voice arrangement of this beloved medieval carol—in the Gonville & Caius Complete Choral Music (ASV Digital CD DCA 1136, 2003; see “Essential Collections,” above)—but it’s a beauty, rising to something like rapture in the florid final cadence. For an idea of what the piece might have sounded like in Clarke’s time, check out John Goss and his Cathedral Male Voice Quartet, the personnel Clarke almost certainly had in mind for it, doing E.J. Moeran’s arrangements of “Sheep Shearing” and “O Sweet Fa’s the Eve,” on a terrific disc of remastered 78 rpm’s from 1925-26 (Divine Art 27808; 2006).
Three Movements for Two Violins and Piano
This astounding suite dates from Clarke’s second year at the Royal College, in 1909-10, but you wouldn’t know it from the absolute assurance of her writing, or the profundity of the Nocturne, which distinctly prefigures the slow movement of the Trio, more than a decade (and a world) later. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could compete with the heart-stopping beauty of Lorraine McAslan/David Juritz/Ian Jones on the second Dutton survey (CDLX 7132; 2003)—as with Dumka, Jones made the first performing-edition of these pieces, and it shows, in a performance of utter commitment and loving discovery, itself a landmark event in the history of Clarke’s music—but Midori Komachi/Sophie Rosa/Simon Callaghan (EM Records EMR CD043; 2017) offer their own kind of passion, along with a hilarious take on “Danse Bizarre,” featuring a laugh-out-loud heehaw just before the final scamper.
Trio
As with the Sonata, there’s something for everyone. Ornstein/Kreger/Eskin and Ovens/Ives/Trew (1980 and 1983, respectively; see above, under “The Pioneers”) have pride of place, and after them came a slew of fine recordings, most of which are still in the catalogue: the Bekova Sisters (Chandos CHAN 9844; 2000), the Storioni Trio (ARS Produktion 4 260052 381625; 2014, with highly inaccurate liner-notes), Trio des Alpes (Dynamic CDS 7717; 2015, with highly misleading liner-notes), the Lincoln Trio (Cedille CDR 90000 165; 2016—a 2017 Grammy-nominee, and rightly so), the Gryphon Trio (Analekta AN 2 9520; 2018), the Neave Trio (Chandos CHAN 20139; 2019), and Trio Rigamonti (Brilliant Classics 96861; 2024, with highly variable liner-notes featuring an unwelcome guest-appearance by Anthony Trent, but with marvelous delineation of the Clarke’s astounding counterpoint).
But one recording of the Trio stands out above all others, not only as a definitive performance of the piece, but as one of the best recordings of Clarke’s music ever issued: a collaboration between pianist Martin Roscoe and various configurations of the Endellion Quartet, comprising Clarke’s Trio, her Viola Sonata, and Amy Beach’s magnificent Piano Quintet, Op. 67 (ASV CD DCA 932, 1995; here and here). The account of the Trio (Andrew Watkinson/David Waterman/Martin Roscoe) is stunningly good, simply as performance; but more to the purpose, it realizes Clarke’s subtle rhythmic transitions with perfect understanding and seemingly effortless command, knitting together material that can feel episodic in other hands, and throwing into high relief the tightness and integrity of Clarke’s argument. This is the only recording based on the short-lived Da Capo Press edition (New York, 1980), which reproduced Clarke’s own working copy of the original publication (London: Winthrop Rogers, 1928) and, with it, accentuation in the piano bass-line, added by hand, that absolutely transfigures important passages in the outer movements (following rehearsal nos. 1, 9, and 27). If I had to choose only one disc for my Desert Island Clarke, this would be it.
The recording by the Gould Piano Trio (Resonus RES10264; 2020) is on the same high level—thrillingly performed, immaculately recorded—and even better at bringing out the depth and proliferative richness of Clarke’s thematic layering. The commentary is highly fanciful: the Trio’s leading motive, for example—swiped from Bloch’s Schelomo and used only a few months earlier to set the line “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God in whom I trust”—is probably not “a haunting depiction of machine-gun fire,” nor does it lead to the “obvious conclusion that the Trio was Clarke’s response to the devastation of The Great War.” Apart from that, this is a magnificent release, right down to fine details such as the emotionally perfect 20-second runoff between the close of Ives’s Trio and the opening of Clarke’s. Beach’s Op. 150 is the icing on the cake.
In both of these recordings, as in that of Trio des Alpes, the slow movement emerges as a quiet statement for the ages.
Two Movements for String Quartet: 1. Comodo e amabile; 2. Adagio (“Poem”)
Here again, there’s something for everyone. The Flesch Quartet (Dutton CDLX 7132, 2003) takes Clarke’s tempo-indications seriously: Comodo e amabile is just that—easy and tender—while the Adagio is drawn out with almost unbearable intensity. The Julstrom String Quartet (Centaur CRC 2847, 2007) and Quatuor Sine Qua Non (Skarbo DSK4182, 2020) take nearly 90 seconds longer over Comodo e amabile, bringing out the piece’s underlying passion and something almost like pain. It depends on what you want: the Flesch and Julstrom performances are high points of important all-Clarke releases (see above, under “Essential Collections”), while Sine Qua Non separates the movements and uses them to frame a thrilling mixed program comprising works by Tailleferre, Beach, and Mulsant (see here for details). In any case, you will be in no doubt as to Clarke’s wisdom in leaving these richly layered movements as stand-alones: each of them says what needs to be said, and stops—anything more would just be noise.
ESSENTIAL CONTEXT
Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Graham Johnson’s In Praise of Woman: 150 Years of English Women Composers (Hyperion CDA66709, 1994; reissued as CDH55159, 2004) is surely one of the finest song-recitals ever recorded. Apart from the beauty and sensitivity of the performances and the intelligence of the programming, this disc should forever put paid to the notion that there were no well-trained, hugely-accomplished, wildly-imaginative, boldly-expressive, formally-adventurous, harmonically-daring, and commercially-successful women composers in Britain in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: in fact, Rebecca Clarke walked into a rich and promising field the moment she started out. The disc includes only two of Clarke’s songs, but it sets them in revelatory contexts—”The Aspidistra” within hailing-distance of Liza Lehmann’s hilarious “Henry King, Who Chewed Little Bits of String, and Was Early Cut Off in Dreadful Agonies,” and “Shy One,” one of Gervase Elwes’s signature-numbers, near Maude Valérie White’s astonishing “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving,” with which Elwes was said to have stunned the room and left bystanders “perfectly unmanned.” The performances probably couldn’t be bettered, and “Shy One” is perfection itself. Sophie Fuller’s liner-notes are worth the price of admission, all by themselves.
The Gould Piano Trio’s survey of Stanford’s trios (in numerical order, by opus, Naxos 8.572452, 2011; 8.573388, 2015; and 8.570416, 2007) shows more than you might expect about where Clarke’s style and methods came from. Stanford had a reputation as a fuddy-duddy traditionalist, but his chamber music feels startlingly original, sometimes quite radical, even today. In these borderline-sublime performances, you can hear what he might have sensed in Clarke’s work, and why she was “enthralled” by his teaching.
Stanford’s vocal music is staggering, too, for its formal daring, the perfection of its prosody, its theatrical judgment, and its vast expressive range. If you doubt me, try his Requiem, Op. 63 (Hyperion CDA68418, 2023) or Stabat Mater, Op. 96 (Naxos 8.573512, 2016), which could give Berlioz and Verdi a run for their money, or Songs of Faith, Love, and Nonsense (Somm SOMMCD 0627, 2021), paying special attention to Nonsense Rhymes by Edward Lear, set to music (ostensibly) by Karel Drofnatski, Op. 365 (et seq.), edited (with notes) by C.V. Stanford, ideally with the manuscript at hand. But if you hazard the Lear cycle, be warned—for the rest of your life, you will not be able to listen a single note of Richard Strauss without getting a bad case of the giggles.
If you labor under the illusion that Clarke’s artistic connection with Vaughan Williams and the “English Musical Renaissance” was tied up in some soft-eyed, slack-brained pastoral nostalgia, then you need to subject yourself to the shattering force that Vaughan Williams and some of his earliest interpreters brought to the idiom. On this point, two sets are essential: the London String Quartet’s 1917-1951 Recordings (Music & Arts CD-1253; 2011), which features Gervase Elwes’s definitive account of On Wenlock Edge, and Somm’s four-volume Vaughan Williams Live series (Somm Ariadne 5016, 5018, 5019-2, and 5020; 2022-23), especially Volume 3, which preserves electrifying broadcasts of the Second and Fifth Symphonies and Dona Nobis Pacem, all conducted, quite overwhelmingly, by the composer himself.
If you wonder—as Clarke did, with open disgust—why Lionel Tertis blew into the greenroom bellowing “Rebecca, you have saved the viola!” after she premiered her Sonata in London, raced to secure the piece for his own use, played it once, never touched it again, and then ghosted Clarke and all of her compositions when he set out to define the viola-repertoire in his articles, interviews, and books, you have only to listen to Timothy Ridout’s A Lionel Tertis Celebration (Harmonia Mundi HMM 905376.77, 2024; with Frank Dupree and James Baillieu) where, after nearly two hours of stuff Tertis did endorse, the Sonata strikes like a lightning-bolt from some other world. (The opening salvo will, quite literally, make you jump.) Tertis and Clarke were friends and colleagues for more than sixty years, but their tastes and goals were radically different, and hers, I think, were at once more progressive and more truly musical. No wonder she had to be disappeared.
If you want to hear four performers whom Clarke truly admired, check out these thrilling comprehensive sets: Eugène Ysaÿe, Violinist and Conductor: The Complete Violin Recordings (Sony Classical Masterworks Heritage MHK 62337, 1996; out of print, but widely available on the resale market); Myra Hess: The Complete Solo and Concerto Studio Recordings (APR 7504; 2013); Kathleen Long: The Decca Solo Recordings, 1941–1945 (APR 6041; 2023); and Kathleen Parlow: The Complete HMV and American Columbia Recordings, 1909–1916 (Biddulph 85036-2; 2024).
And if you’re perplexed by the soggy Ravel’s-baby-brother-tries-to-score-Ben-Hur concoction that’s being passed off as “the Rebecca Clarke viola concerto!“—contrived by other hands, for their own purposes—remember that Clarke didn’t have the slightest interest in writing for orchestra: chamber music, she thought, did everything that was needful, and the orchestra just represented a thickening and a piling-on, for sensational effect. But if you want to fantasize about what Clarke might have sounded like if she’d gone in that direction, check out three fascinating compilations of music by composers whose clarity of thought, line, and texture she respected: Eugene Goossens (ABC Classics ABC4767632; 2005), a fellow viola-player who, she said, worked “wonders” in the orchestral realm; Arthur Bliss (Decca 484 0215; 2020, from older originals), with whom she shared an unfashionably early enthusiasm for Stravinsky; and Frank Bridge (Chandos CHAN 10729(6) X; 2012), another viola-player, who was orchestrating like Stravinsky before Stravinsky was orchestrating like Stravinsky.
CLARKE AS PERFORMER
Clarke was constantly in and out of the broadcast studio, but she made only a handful of commercial recordings: two discs of classical lollipops—”silly things,” she called them—with the Æolian Players (Homochord D.1310 and D. 1311; 1929), including Gounod’s Berceuse, a Minuet in G by Beethoven, Godard’s Berceuse de Jocelyn, and Titl’s Serenade; and Mozart’s “Kegelstett” Trio, with Frederick Thurston and Kathleen Long (National Gramophonic Society 161-62; 1931).
The Mozart disc was a major accomplishment for its time—the first to present the work uncut, and in its original instrumentation, trumping Lionel Tertis and his crew (see Gramophone 8, no. 91, December 1930, 369). It’s lovely in every way, well worth seeking out through antiquarians, or at your nearest recorded-sound archive: the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, for example, will cue it up for you if you ask for Rigler-Deutsche Index DLC 0182/0679.
We have been trying for years to get our hands on the Homochord discs, but to no avail. If you have any leads, please check in.
The Library of Congress has a thrilling air-check of Frank Bridge’s Sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos, recorded at a memorial concert for Bridge in 1941. Clarke plays second viola, so it’s hard to pick her out of the scrum, but it’s a glorious scrum, far better than any performance in the current catalogue. To paraphrase something Clarke said to me once, you can hear how they felt about Frank.
—Christopher Johnson
Rebecca Clarke 