Rebecca Clarke gets her due

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1979 marked the passing, at 93, of a remarkable composer and performer named Rebecca Clarke. Born in Harrow, England, in 1886, she became one of the first female professional orchestral viola players in the United Kingdom, and in 1916 moved to the United States.

At a New York recital in 1918, she premiered one of her own compositions under the male pseudonym of Anthony Trent. While “Trent’s” work was praised, the same reviewers largely ignored or dismissed her other works on the same recital, which she programmed under her name.

Late in Clarke’s life, with the renewal of interest in works by neglected women composers, she enjoyed a major revival of interest in her works, with her Viola Sonata, written in 1919, singled out as a significant achievement. Even so, she wryly remarked to an interviewer that even then “I got one or two press clippings saying that it was impossible, that I couldn’t have written [the Viola Sonata] myself. And the funniest review of all was that I didn’t exist, and there wasn’t any such person as a Rebecca Clarke, that it was a female pseudonym for Ernest Bloch.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Vivace from Viola Sonata; Philip Dukes, viola; Sophia Rahman, piano; Naxos 8.557934

On This Day

Births

• 1864 - Russian composer Alexander Grechaninov, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Oct. 25)

• 1912 - Moravian-born American composer Hugo Weisgall, in Ivancice, Czechoslovakia

Deaths

• 1694 - German composer and trumpeter Johann Christoph Pezel, 55, in Bautzen

• 1979 - English composer Rebecca Clarke, 93, in New York City

Premieres

• 1855 - Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1 (first version, European premiere?), in Danzig (Germany). The American premiere occurred just one month later, on Nov. 27, 1955, at Dodworth’s Hall in New York City, with violinist Theodore Thomas, cellist Carl Bergmann, and pianist William Mason. For many years, the American performance was claimed as the first performance anywhere. A recent Grove dictionary cites this earlier Danzig performance, but does not indicate if it was a private reading or public performance.

• 1917 - Mussorgsky (arr. Cui): opera The Fair at Sorochinsky, posthumously, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Oct. 26)

• 1944 - David Diamond: Symphony No. 2, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky, conductor

• 1945 - Martinu: Symphony No. 3, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting

• 1958 - William Kraft: Nonet for brass and percussion, in Los Angeles

• 1968 - Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 7, in Stockholm

• 1977 - Andrew Imbrie’s Concerto for Flute at New York Philharmonic concert with Julius Baker as the soloist

• 1982 - Bernstein: opera-house version of Candide, at Lincoln Center by the New York City Opera

• 1991 - Daniel Asia: Black Light for orchestra, at Carnegie Hall in New York by the American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies conducting

• 1994 - James MacMillan: Memento for string quartet, at Merkin Hall in New York City, by the Kronos Quartet

• 1998 - Kancheli: Piano Quartet (L’istesso tempo), in Seattle, by the Bridge Ensemble