Presents
Rebecca Clarke
Piano Trio
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was born in the English town of Harrow. Her father was American, her mother German. Clarke was taught the violin at an early age, and then sent for further study at the Royal Academy of Music, in London. In 1908, she went to the Royal College of Music as one of Sir Charles Stanford’s first female composition students. Stanford urged her to shift over to the viola because then she would be “right in the middle of the sound, and can tell how it’s all done.” She subsequently played in orchestras and ensembles around London, and played chamber music with many of the greatest artists of the early twentieth century. Considered a virtuoso, she embarked on tours of Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. During her first American tour, she wrote one of the greatest extended works for viola, her Sonata of 1919, which she entered in an anonymous competition sponsored by the renowned American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Her sonata was tied for first prize. As a result, almost overnight, Clarke became an international sensation, and she made the most of it, barnstorming the Sonata assiduously on both sides of the Atlantic. She followed this up in 1921 with her Piano Trio which she entered in the Berkshire Competition under a false name, which she had also done in the Coolidge Competition. Again, the work was awarded a prize. By comparison to the 12 tone movement, which was then on the rise, Clarke’s writing, while certainly not traditionally tonal, is still more conservative harmonically than that of Webern and Schoenberg.
The trio is in three movements, linked together by a motif (theme) heard at the outset and repeated in the ensuing movements in dramatically varied forms. The first movement, Moderato ma appassionato, begins with the piano’s fortissimo statement of the theme, which consists of six 16th notes, while the strings play a sustained chord. The theme is then taken up by the cello and violin and eventually brought to a dramatic climax. A contrasting second subject is then introduced by the piano, played pianissimo and marked mysterioso. The movement ends with the theme played by the cello and piano canonical fashion. In the second movement, Poco lento e molto semplice, the strings are muted throughout. Hints of a sad, folktune can be heard as Clarke uses arpeggios and double stops to telling effect. The third movement, Allegro vigoroso, begins very energetically with the piano loudly hammering out the first theme over pizzicato chords in the strings. The heavily accented ascending and descending passages become increasingly wild as the music progresses. A quieter section follows which appears to be based on the second theme of the first movement. As the trio winds down, the motif theme makes a final appearance, played in a slow and elegiac fashion before ending with a short and animated coda.
Parts: $29.95
