Rebecca Franks searches out the best recordings of a 1919 masterpiece that explores the viola\u2019s richly varied range of colour and expression <\/p>
\u2018I take this opportunity to emphasise that I do indeed exist\u2026 and that my Viola Sonata is my own unaided work!\u2019 So wrote Rebecca Clarke<\/a><\/strong> in a programme note for a recital in 1977 that included her Viola Sonata. <\/span><\/p>\n By this point, nearly 60 years after Clarke had written the piece in question, she chose to adopt a lightly humorous tone, poking fun at those who may have thought she wasn\u2019t a real composer, even that her sonata was somehow fraudulent.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Yet it must have grated, to say the least, that anyone ever doubted her Viola Sonata was Clarke\u2019s creation. It was, after all, her deep affinity with the instrument that led her to write one of the most important works in the viola repertoire.<\/span><\/p>\n We named it one of the best pieces of viola music of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n