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Donald Macleod explores Rebecca Clarke's final years, when she rarely finished any new works and faded from public view.

Rebecca Clarke was one of the leading viola-players of her generation and composed over one hundred works, many for her own instrument. In 1912 and aged only twenty-five, Sir Henry Wood engaged Clarke to play in his Queen's Hall Orchestra, and from then on she also performed with such luminaries as Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz and Myra Hess in orchestral and chamber settings. Clarke was at the pinnacle of music making both in the UK, and also giving concerts as she toured around the globe. Arthur Rubenstein called her 'the glorious Rebecca Clarke'. As a composer, her viola sonata has stayed firmly in the repertoire yet few other works are remembered today, despite at one point having three publishers negotiating to publish her works. Donald Macleod is joined by Christopher Johnson who married into Clarke's family, and also Ian Jones, Deputy Head of Keyboard at the Royal College of Music, to lift the veil on this once highly regarded performer and composer.

In 1940 Rebecca Clarke was active as a radio presenter, introducing listeners to string quartets by a variety of composers. It was in 1941 that she composed her tongue-in-cheek 'Get 'em all over at Once', for string quartet. It was also in the mid-1940s that Clarke became reacquainted with an old college friend, the musician James Friskin. Friskin said he'd long held a candle for Clarke, and they married in 1944. As both Clarke and Friskin loved Bach, it could have been for him that she made an arrangement of Bach's Magnificat for piano. Similarly, as Clarke played the viola and Friskin the piano, she may also have composed for him, around this same time, 'I'll Bid My Heart Be Still'. Clarke lived on into her nineties and died in 1979. In those last few decades her compositional output faded away, and it's only in more recent years that we've begun to re-evaluate and appreciate the importance of Rebecca Clarke.

Combined Carols (Get 'em all over at Once)
The Julstrom String Quartet

Bach arr. Rebecca Clarke
Magnificat, BWV243 (He Hath Filled the Hungry)
Ian Jones, piano

Dumka
Lorraine McAslan, violin
Michael Ponder, viola
Ian Jones, piano

I'll Bid My Heart Be Still
Kenneth Martinson, viola
Christopher Taylor, piano

Chorus from Shelley's 'Hellas'
Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge
Geoffrey Webber, conductor

Cello Sonata
Raphael Wallfisch, cello
John York, piano

Producer Luke Whitlock.