Rebecca Clarke's beautiful Viola Sonata and her remarkable Piano Trio are deservedly becoming almost repertory pieces these days, but I don't recall a previous recording of Amy Beach's Piano Quintet. It is one of her best works, distinctly post-Brahmsian but with a softer lyrical vein and an individual talent for not doing the obvious. Her finale, for example, is marked Allegro agitato, and at first one takes the adjective to refer to its restless impetus. In fact, though, the movement's headlong progress is continually checked by moods of unquiet melancholy, and even the energetic conclusion is ambiguous. It satisfyingly balances an opening movement rendered similarly unstable by the return of its mysterious slow introduction. There is abundant melodic appeal, especially in the song-like middle movement, but although the Quintet is beautifully made and ingeniously planned it does not have quite enough identity to lodge in the memory.
Ironically enough, this is especially noticeable when Beach is coupled, as here, with Clarke. Clarke's Trio is as much about the undercutting or assailing of lyricism as Beach's Quintet is, but here the language is so much more personal that the drama is immediately more gripping. The end of the Trio's first movement has a bleak quality of conflict unresolved that almost approaches Shostakovich, and when the apparently untroubled dance music of the finale (with a hint of folk melody to it) is first challenged by a mournful lyricism from earlier in the work, then by quite unexpected fanfares and march rhythms the sheer scale of the conflict is greater than anything Beach can encompass. The slow movement, too, strikingly builds a strong, beautiful lyricism from more anxious and more hectic music. It is a fine piece, and very beautifully played. Nor can I remember a better recorded performance of the Viola Sonata: Garfield Jackson is audibly grateful for a fellow-violist's idiomatic sympathy for the instrument's eloquence and its ability to sketch large gestures, and in the scherzo he is delighted to find Clarke in genial, exuberant mood (though even here there is a quiet corner of wistfulness). For anyone who doubts, or does not yet know, that Clarke (1886-1979) was one of the most accomplished British composers of her generation there could be no better proof than this coupling, to which the Beach Quintet is an agreeable bonus. First-class recorded sound throughout. R1 '9510058'