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Valiulina, Santi and Panchieri Following Clarke’s Footsteps
Composer Rebecca Clarke: Three Women Record Her Works for Violin, Viola & Piano
Album Recommendation: Rebecca Clarke is regarded as an important composer of the interwar period. Ekaterina Valiulina, Margherita Santi, and Giulia Panchieri have recorded several of her works.
Very gently, the viola part feels its way toward the softly resonating tones of the piano.
“I’ll Bid My Heart Be Still,” it sings — I will bid my heart be still. It is an old Scottish melody. To these traditional sounds, Rebecca Clarke adds a free piano accompaniment that seems to reflect upon the melody itself — moving through its own unique loops and turns.
When listening, one is reminded of devout religious chorales and folk songs just as much as of impressionistic and even more modern sounds. The solemn, steady character of the melody merges with pentatonic scales and experimental harmonies in the accompaniment.
One of the most significant British composers of the interwar years
It is precisely this blend that gives Rebecca Clarke’s compositions their distinctive sound. In the booklet accompanying the album by Ekaterina Valiulina, Margherita Santi, and Giulia Panchieri, it states that Clarke’s music “observes the world, perceives the invisible, and understands it — yet chooses not to interfere.”
Violinist Ekaterina Valiulina, violist Giulia Panchieri, and pianist Margherita Santi aim to create a lasting tribute to Rebecca Clarke’s music for violin, viola, and piano with their album. They perform works from all periods of the composer’s career — the earliest dating from 1909, the latest from the 1940s.
Although Clarke lived until 1979, she stopped composing after her marriage to pianist James Friskin in 1944. That is why the Trio Dumka is considered one of her last known works. In it, memories of Czech dances merge with avant-garde harmonies.
Contemporaries believed Rebecca Clarke to be a male composer
One of her main works is the three-movement Sonata for Viola, written in 1918 during a concert tour — for herself. When she submitted the piece to a competition a year later, the judges thought it was the work of Maurice Ravel.
So vibrant was its harmonic inventiveness, so rich its dynamic color — that they could hardly imagine such brilliant music had been composed by a woman. They even considered it more likely that “Rebecca Clarke” was the pseudonym of a male composer.
In their interpretation, Giulia Panchieri and Margherita Santi particularly highlight the capricious, unrestrained character that the composer envisioned in the interplay between viola and piano.
A sensitive recording honoring Rebecca Clarke’s legacy
Time and again, Rebecca Clarke draws on influences from traditional Far Eastern music, as well as Irish, English, and Scottish folk melodies. Her Passacaglia on an Old English Tune, attributed to Thomas Tallis, was likely composed for the funeral of her close friend Frank Bridge.
Panchieri and Santi present this dark, solemn music on stage as if handling a precious object. They follow the score with deep admiration, yet manage to make their voices sound as though the melodies were arising from completely spontaneous emotion.
It is hard to comprehend how this music could have been lost and forgotten for decades. All the more important, then, are sensitive recordings like this one — each new interpretation further strengthens the legacy of this remarkable composer.
Margherita Santi 