Photo Credit: Steve the Artist

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LOST FOR NEARLY A CENTURY, A BEAUTIFUL “NEW” DUET JOINS THE REPERTOIRE

A first edition of Rebecca Clarke’s Irish Melody (Emer’s Farewell to Cucullain), the third of her duets for viola (or violin) and cello, has just been announced by Gems Music Publications, with release to follow almost immediately. 

This is a genuine “discovery,” and for once that term is merited in every way. The piece slipped from memory during Clarke’s lifetime, leaving only a few faint traces—a single, tantalizing newspaper-review in 1918, and two entries in Clarke’s diaries for 1927. It turned up again in 2015, out of the blue, in the form of a manuscript in the private collection of the late John White, longtime professor of viola at the Royal Academy of Music, London, along with the only known manuscripts of Clarke’s other duets for viola and cello, the famous Lullaby and Grotesque (Oxford University Press, 1930; rev. ed. 2002). White’s wife Carol realized instantly that she was seeing something new and unusual, and brought it to our attention. It is largely through her efforts that Irish Melody has been brought back to life, and can now be put before the public in an Urtext edition by Kenneth Martinson and yours truly.

It’s a honey of a piece—fully the equal of its better-known peers—a full-throated arrangement of the tune familiar to most of us as “Londonderry Air,” or as “Danny Boy,” but with a startling and deeply moving twist: like many of Clarke’s pieces with poetic or literary titles (Morpheus, or Passacaglia on an Old English Tune, for example), it encrypts a passionate back-story. The Gems edition lays all this out, while explaining the piece’s fascinating background and performance-history.

Through July 31, customers who buy the piece with at least one other title will be offered a free PDF download as soon as their order ships. Either way, you won’t be sorry: it’s absolutely gorgeous; it’s almost infinitely useful in concert, either as a stand-alone or in various combinations with the other duets; and your audiences—like Clarke’s at the first known performance, in a high-school auditorium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, back in the summer of 1918—will be “strong in their appreciation.”

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JULY 19th—SAVE THE DATE!

Because of COVID-19, Berkshire Choral International, the venerable summer institute based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is unable to offer amateur singers its usual feast of professional-level choral immersion experiences this summer, but that won’t stop the annual faculty-and-staff recital from going on as scheduled, on Sunday, July 19, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (US), with party to follow. Both events will be virtual—the recital via BCI’s YouTube channel, the party via Zoom—and you’re invited.

We’re passing the word for three reasons: first, because we wholeheartedly endorse BCI’s mission, to “enhance the skills of amateur choral singers and to promote a wider appreciation of choral singing and its tradition”; second, because we have worked with several of BCI’s world-class conductors and can vouch for the pleasure and educational value of their company; and finally, because the recital features Laura Strickling’s riveting, tightly focused account of Rebecca Clarke’s The Seal Man.

You may already have watched this performance on our Video page, but it’ll be good to see it in the context of a fascinating program that also features works by Handel, Schumann, Debussy, Respighi, Poulenc, Copland, and Schoenberg. Plus, our Video page lacks an after-party, so it’s all gain.

Direct links to follow. In the meantime, the best course is to sign up for BCI’s YouTube channel, and catch the trailer for the recital here. A complete list of performers and works can be found here.

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OUT TODAY! A BEAUTIFUL CD THAT PUTS THE SONATA IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT

Just as we launch our new Rebecca Clarke discography, there comes Silhouettes, a gorgeous new release from Channel Classics that situates Clarke’s Viola Sonata (1919) right where it belongs—in close relationship with the cosmopolitan European modernism centered in Paris in the immediate aftermath of World War I, when Maurice Ravel was still a hot new thing out near the cutting edge, and Clarke was in a position not only to play much of his chamber music before the ink on it was quite dry, but to play some of it under his own wayward baton, and to read his Tarot—to alarming effect—at the after-concert party.

For Dana Zemtsov, the violist on Silhouettes, which releases today worldwide, the Sonata breathes a French atmosphere—“It has this French smell,” she says, in a charming “making of” video—and in the hands of Zemtsov and pianist Anna Fedorova, it most assuredly does, sitting comfortably, as if at home, at the head of a substantial, richly varied program of French and French-influenced works by Debussy, Milhaud, Enescu, and Arne Werkman.

For all the attempts to shoehorn Clarke into the “English Musical Renaissance,” she never quite fit there. In fact, she was in thrall to Debussy, and she worshipped Pelléas—early in her career as a jobbing violist, she blew two week’s rent on a copy of the vocal score, then hot off the presses, as a birthday present to herself. The inspiration showed plainly in her own work, as most of the Sonata’s earliest critics saw at once: “Its style is the happiest combination of British and French,” one rejoiced, while another was blown away by the opening of the final movement, where Clarke showed “her greatest genius, for here the music is mystical and macabre, in places as poignant, as moving as anything heard in the death chamber of Mélisande.” And then there’s the famous story of the 1919 Coolidge competition, where the Sonata—entered anonymously, as required—deadlocked for the prize, and when the seals were broken, the judges were astounded to learn that the piece that they thought to be “the work of a poet,” whom several of them assumed was Maurice Ravel, was not only by a woman, but by an Englishwoman at that.

Zemtsov and Fedorova’s performance of the Sonata is outstanding—by turns sensitive, passionate, and dry-eyed, as needed—with just the right touch of portamento in the lyrical passages, and real wit in the scherzo. The contrapuntal equality of the two instruments has rarely been brought out so beautifully. And you will never again be able to hear Clarke’s music without noticing at once the debt she owed to Debussy’s Faune, especially to that little falling-fourth pattern at rehearsal no. 4, which lurks in so many of Clarke’s lyrical second subjects. Even in a field awash in fine recordings, Silhouettes is truly special.

Silhouettes (Dana Zemtsov, viola / Anna Fedorova, piano). Includes Rebecca Clarke, Sonata for Viola and Piano; Debussy, La plus que lente, Clair de lune, Beau soir; Werkman, Suite for Viola and Piano; Milhaud, Sonata No. 1 for Viola and Piano, Op. 240; Enescu, Concert Piece for Viola and Piano. Channel Classics CD CCS 42320, 2020.

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We’ve added a Rebecca Clarke “Audio” page to our menu—you know, that thing that used to be called a “discography,” back when there was nothing but, you know, discs. It’s highly selective, given the enormity and complexity of Clarke’s presence in sound in the world today, and it’s likely to change by the minute, given the imminent release of…. But our lips are sealed until June 19. Watch this space. [Update: Our lips are unsealed.]

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Sheet Music Plus, one of the most comprehensive and reliable music-sellers on Earth, has just announced simultaneous sales on “New and Notable Music by Women” and on Oxford University Press titles, which together will give you a 20% discount on virtually everything in Rebecca Clarke’s retail backlist, so maybe it’s time for you to replace that tattered copy of the Trio you’ve been taping back together for the past four years (and save $16.40!), or take a flyer on Clarke’s glorious string-quartet movements (and save $9.20!), or invest in OUP’s big song-collection for the simple pleasure of studying “Tiger, Tiger” and “Binnorie” and seeing what real terror looks like (while saving $8.60!).

And even if you already own one of the Urtext editions of Clarke’s Passacaglia on an Old English Tune, you might want to throw in Schirmer’s reprint of their original 1943 publication, which preserves Clarke’s detailed markup of the parts. The viola and cello versions are now sold separately, but they’re a steal at $6.39 and $7.99, respectively.

The sales run through July 7. New titles, special orders, and on-demand items are not included. If you have any questions, our friend Shannon and all the other nice folks at Sheet Music Plus’s crackerjack Customer Service Department are soldiering on heroically from home, and you can reach them as usual at 1-800-743-3868, Monday through Friday, between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm Central Time.

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To celebrate our second day of operation, we’ve put up a gallery of photos covering virtually the whole of Rebecca Clarke’s public life as a musician, beginning around 1905, when she left the Royal Academy of Music, and ending in 1976, as she was in the thick of helping Christopher Johnson write his thematic catalogue of her works. Enjoy! (More to follow.)