An impressive portrait of Rebecca Clarke through the prism of her chamber music, encompassing the powerful Viola Sonata as well as a diverse sequence of miniatures and sound pictures.

After decades of neglect, Rebecca Clarke's music is now receiving the attention it deserves, revealing her individuality as one of the most distinctive English composers of the post-Elgar generation. In her booklet essay, pianist Margherita Santi recalls her encounter with Clarke and how it immediately aroused "deep admiration and amazement": she finds the roots of Clarke's style in the music of Franck and Ravel, but also in the German tradition, and pays tribute to the composer's uncompromisingly individual language.

The Viola Sonata is one of Clarke's major works, which she wrote in 1918/19 during a tour between Honolulu and Detroit and for her own performance. The sonata has since found its way into the repertoire of violists with its passionate expressiveness and raw harmony, balancing pastorality with unsentimental harshness, which makes its occasional moments of visionary mysticism all the more effective. As Margherita Santi notes, the sonata "evokes a melancholy sensibility: the gaze of someone who observes the world, perceives and understands the invisible, but chooses not to intervene."

Despite their smaller scale, the other works here are hardly less substantial. Morpheus (1917), named after the Greek god of sleep, inhabits a world of melancholy reveries, which the viola part adorns with Szymanowski-like piano writing. Two lullabies, harmonically simpler, are no less effective and even more beautiful; two folk song settings, one Scottish, the other English, are moving in their simple restraint.

The Passacaglia, also based on an English folk tune, returns to the dark and stormy world of the viola sonata. "Midsummer Moon" (for violin and piano) is perhaps the closest Clarke's composition comes to a popular salon style. Finally, the trio of instruments join forces in a nostalgic "Dumka": a masterful fusion of Czech dance style with Clarke's own forward-looking perspective.

Made in Milan in 2024, this studio recording provides an ideal introduction to the world of Rebecca Clarke, presenting her in her entirety through cultivated performances by musicians who feel an affinity with the composer's pioneering and fearless spirit.