We are celebrating Rebecca Clarke on today August 27, 2023, the 137th anniversary of her birth. We would also like to honor the amazing radio journalist Robert Sherman, who passed away on June 27, 2023. With his two broadcast interviews with her in 1976, Robert Sherman launched the re-discovery of Rebecca Clarke as a composer. We are making the unedited version of the interview available on Youtube. Recorded before June 26, 1976, edited portions of the interview were then broadcast on her 90th birthday, August 27, 1976, as part of Sherman’s long-running program, The Listening Room. This program is available on the WQXR Website, https://www.wqxr.org/series/the-listening-room/31/ and includes a performance of the Viola Sonata (with Toby Appel, viola, and Emmanual Ax, piano), the Piano Trio, performed by the American Piano Trio) and several songs, with baritone David Baron.
This unedited interview was transcribed and published in A Rebecca Clarke Reader, 2004, pp. 170-181, and can be freely read on Google Books, Mr. Sherman was always extremely gracious in sharing his valuable work and happy for it to be made widely available, with the one condition being that his role was acknowledged. We are happy to acknowledge him and honor him for preserving Clarke’s memorable voice and so many vivid recollections. Mr. Sherman passed away on June 27, 2023, at the age of 90. Here is the New York Times obituary of Robert Sherman, music journalist and broadcaster on WQXR radio for more than five decades.
