In 1907, Rebecca Clarke became the first woman to be admitted into Stanford’s composition class at London’s Royal College of Music. During the next two years, she completed (among other things) a violin sonata and the haunting Lullaby for viola and piano (track 11 on this hugely rewarding and extremely generous anthology). Within a decade, Clarke had developed into a formidable performer: Henry Wood had employed her as a violist in his Queen’s Hall Orchestra, and she regularly played chamber music with such luminaries as Jelly d’Aranyi, Guilhermina Suggia and Myra Hess. Works such as the Two Pieces for viola and cello of 1917 and Morpheus for viola and piano (1918) reveal a growing stylistic confidence and fluency, and there’s no denying the endur-ing appeal of the ravishing, languorously Szymanowskian Midsummer Moon (perfect encore material) and winsome Chinese Puzzle (both for violin and piano, dating from 1924 and 1921 respectively).
The Epilogue for cello and piano (written for Suggia in 1921) is another fine achievement. But none of them quite prepares the listener for the slumbering, bardic splendour of the 1923 Rhapsody for cello and piano, an extraordinarily ambitious, seamlessly wrought canvas (Clarke’s lengthiest, clocking in at nearly 24 minutes), whose tolling introduction spookily foreshadows the opening measures of Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem of 18 years later. By contrast, a chaste purity inhabits the ear-ticklingly inventive Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for clarinet and viola as well as the serenely Bachian Passacaglia on an Old English Tune for cello and piano, both of which were written in the United States in 1941. Three years later, Clarke married James Friskin (a teacher at the Juilliard and former colleague at the RCM). She never returned to England, dying in New York at the ripe old age of 93.
Performances throughout are as poised as they are dedicated; and let’s have a special word of praise for the indefatigable efforts of Michael Ponder in his multiple role of violist, annotator, producer and engineer. A lovely collection.'