Recommended Sheet Music,
John York introduces Rebecca Clarke's Rhapsody for Piano & Cello
by Ellena Taylor
Presto Music are excited to announce that, in collaboration with Nimbus Music Publishing, we now offer a wide selection of sheet music by Rebecca Clarke. Watch the video below to hear John York talk about Clarke's Rhapsody for Piano and Cello. Until the end of July, all Nimbus Music Publishing products are 25% off.
This is the first publication of Rhapsody as anauthorised Performing Edition. Pianist John York meticulously edited the work whilst for the first time having access to the full colour manuscript (held by the Library of Congress) showing all the intricate markings and comments by Clarke, Mukle and Hess.
'I felt a need, and relished the opportunity, to exploit my admiration for Clarke’s idiosyncrasies after having performed the Sonata so many times throughout my life – and the Dialogue with Rebecca Clarke, written in 2007, for the fine Moldovan violist Mikhail Mouller, was enormous fun to write. There are some recognizable motifs and rhythms, lifted from the sonata and re-used, combined with my own original themes, and my harmonies sometimes follow her general example.' John York
Including the Cello Sonata, Epilogue for Cello & Piano, I'll Bid My Heart Be Still, Passacaglia on an old English Tune for Cello & Piano, Rhapsody for Cello & Piano, Sonata for Cello (or Viola) and Piano, and John York's Dialogue with Rebecca Clarke.
Rebecca Clarke (born Harrow, London, 27 August 1886 to US-German parents – died New York City, 13 October 1979) was an extraordinary woman with a tough, unconventional and long life story. Initially studying violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London but withdrawn by her father when her harmony professor there proposed to her, she was thrown out of the family home in 1905 by her father when she criticised him for his philandering. She had to fend for herself, turning to composition (she was Stanford’s first female student) and the viola which she studied with the great Lionel Tertis. She excelled in both fields and was soon able to support herself. She quickly became a leading chamber music and orchestral violist, working with all the major figures in London, including Frank Bridge and Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alfred Cortot and Jacques Thibaud. Her concert work took her around the world, especially with the cellist May Mukle and the pianist Myra Hess, the brilliant duo for whom the 1923 Rhapsody was certainly conceived.
John York's career was launched in the early 1970s when he won the Debussy Prize in Paris and gave his solo Wigmore Hall debut. His concert work quickly developed in chamber music rather than solo and, over the next nearly five decades, he enjoyed success with the York Piano Trio and Piano Quartet alongside his long-established duos with cellist Raphael Wallfisch and the York2 piano duo. Professor of Piano at London's Guildhall School and Senior Music Head at the famous St Paul's Girls' School, he is now retired and living in Canterbury.
Ellena has been Sheet Music Specialist at Presto Music since 2018 and now she is Sheet Music and Books Manager. She graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with a first-class BMus (Hons) degree in 2016. Specialising in the flute, she has a wide-ranging interest in music, not only in classical but also popular and jazz genres.
