REVIEWS FOR ‘REBECCA CLARKE–THE COMPLETE SONGS’

THE GUARDIAN

“Rich, radiant performances bring a forgotten voice to life

Rebecca Clarke’s songs have been edging on to the radar recently, but this recording, led by the mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Anna Tilbrook, is the first time they have all been assembled together…Around a third of them are recorded for the first time, several are settings of German poetry that Clarke wrote as a student in London; some show her feeling her way towards her own sound, but the best – for example, the quietly imaginative Aufblick – are already distinctive.

Her mature style is dark, expansive and melodic, with a storytelling sensibility that shines in The Seal Man and then Binnorie, an extended setting of a Scottish ballad discovered only after Clarke’s death, recorded here with a solo part for viola, Clarke’s own instrument…another highlight is Daybreak, a setting of half a dozen lines by John Donne in which tenor and string quartet form five equally eloquent voices.

The performers are persuasive, with Whately in particular on superb form, her voice laser-focused and glowing.”

EUROPADISC

“Of the various women composers whose music has attracted long overdue attention in recent years, one of the most consistently rewarding and naturally gifted is Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979)…A handful of her songs appear with frequency on disc, but the vast majority are unknown. Thanks are due, then, to Signum Classics for collecting Clarke’s complete songs on a generously filled double album…

…What strikes the listener first is the variety of settings, with texts ranging from Shakespeare, Calderón and Goethe to Rosetti, Maeterlinck, Dehmel and Yeats…They inhabit a post-Romantic soundworld, with hints of the Impressionist influence that was to become a hallmark of Clarke’s style. Nicholas Phan’s performances are highly persuasive…

…It is, however, the English-texted settings of the 1910s and 20s that really reveal a song composer of genius. Try the limpid textures of The Cloths of Heaven (Yeats, 1927), with Phan’s sensitively shaded voice accompanied by exquisitely delicate piano figuration from Tilbrook…”