August 7, 2006
1919 Viola Sonata of Rebecca Clarke to be featured at Clark University
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Worcester, Mass. - A concert of viola and piano music will be given by Clark music faculty members Peter Sulski and John McGinn on Sunday, September 10 at 3 p.m., with a pre-concert lecture by Liane Curtis of Brandeis University at 2:15 p.m.
The concert's centerpiece will be the great Viola Sonata (1919) of British-American composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). Musicologist Liane Curtis, founder and President of the Rebecca Clarke Society, Inc. (based at Brandeis University where Curtis is an Affiliated Scholar in the Women's Studies Research Center) will deliver a pre-concert presentation on Clarke's life and music, featuring live musical excerpts along with portions of a 1976 interview with the then-90-year-old composer.
The concert will also feature the world premiere of A Tad Low Strung by John McGinn, assistant professor of music at Clark; a new suite of solo viola pieces by John McDonald, associate professor of music at Tufts; and viola sonatas by German composer Paul Hindemith (1922) and British composer Kevin Allen (1971). Composers McGinn and McDonald will be joined by Allen, who will travel from England.
Writing for Gramophone in 1987, Malcolm MacDonald praised Rebecca Clarke as "a revelation – a composer I now believe to have been one of the very best of her time." Clarke achieved what she called her "one brief whiff of fame" in 1919 when her Viola Sonata tied for first place in a competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Born and educated in Great Britain, Clarke lived much of her life in the United States. Striking in its passion and power, her music spans a range of 20th-century styles including Impressionism, post-Romantic, and neo-Classical. Although she wrote nearly 100 works (including songs, choral works, chamber pieces and music for solo piano), only 20 pieces were published in her lifetime, and by the time of her death in 1979, at age 93, all of these were long out of print.
Events will be held in Clark University's Razzo Hall in the Traina Center for the Arts, 22 Downing St., Worcester. They are free and open to the public. The concert is sponsored by the Clark Music Program and ClarkArts. For more information, call 508-793-7340.