Viola and Piano: Robert Secret & Haruko Seki

Gavin Bryars: The North Shore

Rebecca Clarke: Viola Sonata

“Poète, prends ton luth ; le vin de la jeunesse Fermente cette nuit dans les veines de Dieu.” Alfred de Musset.

America’s musical press in 1919 was awash with rumours about a new work – Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. It had just tied for first place in the prestigious Berkshire Festival Chamber Music Competition, for which all entries had to be submitted anonymously. The jurors had speculated that

the Sonata had been written by Ravel and were astonished when Clarke was revealed as the composer. ‘You should have seen their faces when they saw it was by a woman,’ the festival’s patron confided to Clarke. The Sonata was hailed in the press as a work of ‘greatest genius’, compared favourably to pieces by Debussy. Leah Broad