BaL 17.10.15 - Rebecca Clarke: Viola Sonata

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

0930 Building a Library
Helen Wallace compares available versions of Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata and makes a personal recommendation. The Viola Sonata was written in 1918 and 1919, Clarke started it in Honolulu and finished it in Detroit. She submitted it to the international competition for chamber music run by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge at her 1919 Berkshire Chamber Music Festival. 73 scores were submitted and two scores for viola and piano tied-Bloch's Suite and Clarke's Sonata. The prize went to Bloch on Coolidge's casting vote.


Available versions:-

Vladimir Bukac, Jaromir Klepac (download)
Barbara Buntrock, Daniel Heide
Paul Coletti, Leslie Howard
Philip Dukes, Caroline Clemmow
Philip Dukes, Sophia Rahman
Robert Glazer, Gilda Glazer (download)
Garfield Jackson, Martin Roscoe
Matthew Jones, Michael Hampton
Daniela Kohnen, Holger Bluder
Hartmut Lindemann, Ben Martin
Vidor Nagy, Günter Schmidt
Christine Rutledge, Ksenia Nosikova
Konstantin Sellheim, Katharina Sellheim (download)
Barbara Westphal, Jeffrey Swann
Peijun Xu, Paul Rivinius
Tabea Zimmermann, Kirill Gerstein

[Barbirollians]

What an excellent piece to choose - a terrific work .

[richardfinegold]

This is new to me. Listening to it on Spotify. There was a lot of Viola Music composed at this time by British Composers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What an excellent piece to choose - a terrific work .

I agree - and wouldn't mind an extra recording to add to the Coletti/Howard recording on the HELIOS disc "English Music for Viola", which I have. This gives a glimpse of the variety of output remarked on by rfg (other works by Clarke, and RVW, BB, Bax, Bridge, and Grainger) but whose liner notes fail even to mention the principal cause of this interest in the instrument; the Viola player Lionel Tertis.

[verismissimo]

What an excellent piece to choose - a terrific work .

Yes, exactly that, Barbs. I love it dearly. First learned from a terrific recording by Josef Kodousek and Kveta Novotna on Supraphon, presumably NLA.

[Pianorak]

On R3's Classical Breakfast Show this morning:

Rebecca Clarke: Midsummer moon for violin and piano
Performer: Jonathan Rees. Performer: Kathron Sturrock.

[Don Petter]

The classic pioneering recording (in the LP, then CD, era) by Patricia McCarty and Virginia Eskin on Northeastern seems to be nla, though you can still obtain copies on Amazon, at a price, for new or at a lesser price, for second hand:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-for-Viola/dp/B000001YLB

[Don Petter]

Philip Dukes and Sophia Rahmon (Naxos) had earlier recorded the work on the now defunct Gamut label:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clarke-Sonata-Maconchy-Sketches-Shostakovich/dp/B000025YIY/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1444470270&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=dukes+rahmon

I presume the Naxos is a new recording.


The recording of the 'cello version by Barry Snyder and Pamela Frame on Koch from 1994 is available from Arkiv:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=82513

A recent recording (Alexander Baillie and John Thwaites) appears on a Somm 2CD set:

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Somm/SOMM2512

[CallMePaul]

This should be interesting. Until I heard Midsummer Moon yesterday morning, and Martin Handley giving a brief introduction to the composer, she was literally just a name to me. Given the date of composition I would have expected her music to be more radical than the piece played yesterday.

I am amazed that there are so many recordings of a piece by such a little-known composer. I suspect that violists know and play it, although I note that there are no recordings by such distinguished violists as Lawrence Power, Yuri Bashmet and Kim Kashkashian, to look only at the present generation of players. I have certainly never heard the piece and will listen next week with great interest!

[verismissimo]

Interesting bio on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Clarke_(composer)

[Barbirollians]

I have the Naxos recording referred to above -sounds very good to my ears .

[verismissimo]

What an opening to this spiffing work...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Excellent and informative review so far.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Excellent and informative review so far.

though I guess it's quite easy to be informative about a less well-known work. (Much trickier to 'inform 'with the Eroica or Mahler 1, with us know-alls anyway...)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

though I guess it's quite easy to be informative about a less well-known work. (Much trickier to 'inform 'with the Eroica or Mahler 1, with us know-alls anyway...)

Very true.