Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

[Christopher]

And another concert featuring Coleridge-Taylor - this time in Westminster:

https://www.sjss.org.uk/events/royal-orchestral-society-2

Sun 13 November - 7.00pm
£20, £16

ROS 150th Season Choral Concert
Ron Corp OBE
CONDUCTOR
Royal Orchestral Society and The London Chorus
Eleanor Dennis
SOPRANO
Oliver Johnston
TENOR

Beethoven
Egmont Overture Opus 84

Sir Arthur Sullivan
Festival Te Deum

Dvorak
Mein Heim Opus 62

Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast Opus 30

[Alan Howe]

Of course, there was a time when Hiawatha's Wedding Feast was standard fare, at least in the UK...

[Christopher]

Well maybe two concerts featuring it in two months in London alone is encouraging in that respect.

I see Chineke! have also just released a large album of his music:
- Othello Suite
- African Suite
- Ballade in A minor
- Petite Suite de Concert
- Violin Concerto
- Romance for violin
- Nonet

Plus a piece by his daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor "Sussex Landscape"

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/coleridge-taylor/1635779871



Every year during the 1920s and '30s, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's cantata trilogy Hiawatha was performed in London by thousands of amateur singers. Today, the composer's other works are, at last, getting their deserved place in the sun. Chineke! Orchestra offer a generous selection of the Black British composer's other works, including his beguiling African Suite (1898), inspired by the ideals of Pan-Africanism, the Othello (1909), complete with a heart-melting trumpet solo in "The Willow Song", and the Nonet (1894), written during Coleridge-Taylor's student days at the Royal College of Music. The album's standout work, the Violin Concerto in G Minor, receives a deeply affecting performance from Elena Urioste and Chineke! under the empathetic direction of Kevin John Edusei. They reach top form in the work's rhapsodic slow movement, shaping its exquisite melodies and emotional fluctuations with spellbinding sensitivity. The composer's daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor was a fine composer in her own right—as a delightful album bonus, her atmospheric orchestral suite Sussex Landscape here receives its world premiere recording.



Coleridge-Taylor
Every year during the 1920s and '30s, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's cantata trilogy Hiawatha was performed in London by thousands of amateur singers. Today, the composer's other works are, at last, getting their deserved place in the sun. Chineke! Orchestra offer a generous selection of the Black British composer's other works, including his beguiling African Suite (1898), inspired by the ideals of Pan-Africanism, the Othello (1909), complete with a heart-melting trumpet solo in "The Willow Song", and the Nonet (1894), written during Coleridge-Taylor's student days at the Royal College of Music. The album's standout work, the Violin Concerto in G Minor, receives a deeply affecting performance from Elena Urioste and Chineke! under the empathetic direction of Kevin John Edusei. They reach top form in the work's rhapsodic slow movement, shaping its exquisite melodies and emotional fluctuations with spellbinding sensitivity. The composer's daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor was a fine composer in her own right—as a delightful album bonus, her atmospheric orchestral suite Sussex Landscape here receives its world premiere recording.

[semloh]

That's "CD of the week" on Classics FM here in Australia. I think most of the music has appeared on CD before.

[Alan Howe]

Yes, it's all a bit late to the C-T party. In particular, there are multiple competing versions of the VC. I'd say shop around rather than buying this.

[Adrian Harrison]

There are, as Alan says, multiple competing versions of the Violin Concerto, some marginally more accomplished than others but none of them is a dud. This one is as good as any. This two CD set has some advantages, though. The only complete recording of the Othello music is that conducted by Malcolm Sargent and dates from 1932. The vesrion on Naxos conducted by Adrian Leaper (and recently re-issued) omits the Funeral March.

The African Suite recorded here is not otherwise available: the first three movements are orchestrated by Chris Cameron in a manner so completely idiomatic that had I not known otherwise, I would have accepted them as the composer's own work. SC-T orchestrated the last movement himself, of course, and this had been recorded several times.

Also, the performance of the Petite Suite de Concert, conducted by the American Anthony Parnther, is a real winner. It reminds me of George Weldon's recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra; there's something peculiarly English about it as if it had been recorded by a top flight municipial orchestra on a seaside bandstand! Maestro Parnther also observes the repeats in the first movement which can only benefit a piece that I wish were longer in any case.

I would categorise the recording of the op 33 Ballade conducted by Kalena Bovell as 'acceptable' but it doesn't supplant the wonderful performance by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Grant Llewellyn, which contrasts the sections more effectively and is more full of character.

Finally, I must say that I feel Avril Coleridge-Taylor's Sussex Landscape, while a pleasant enough thirteen minutes, shows that she didn't have a quarter of her dear old dad's talent.
 

[Dr Gradus]

I would add that I am very much looking forward to performing (with my fiddle under my chin) in the concert on the 9th at Fairfield Halls referred to earlier in this thread, the link to which I repost here: https://www.londonmozartplayers.com/whatson-event/a-fresh-take-on-samuel-coleridge-taylor/?venue=20893.

The LMP asked me to write an article about the significance of Hiawatha, which can be found on the LMP website here: https://www.londonmozartplayers.com/the-significance-of-hiawatha-2/

Fenella Humphreys will be well worth hearing in the Violin Concerto.

[Christopher]

I would add that I am very much looking forward to performing (with my fiddle under my chin) in the concert on the 9th at Fairfield Halls referred to earlier in this thread, the link to which I repost here: https://www.londonmozartplayers.com/whatson-event/a-fresh-take-on-samuel-coleridge-taylor/?venue=20893.

The LMP asked me to write an article about the significance of Hiawatha, which can be found on the LMP website here: https://www.londonmozartplayers.com/the-significance-of-hiawatha-2/

Fenella Humphreys will be well worth hearing in the Violin Concerto.

I was there Dr Gradus - it was an excellent concert, brilliant. Thank you.  And yes, Fenella Humphreys really brought out the violin concerto and especially the slow second movement - real goosebumps.  I hope this was recorded, it certainly deserved to be.

[Christopher]

I notice that Chineke! also had an SCT concert last night in the Queen Elizabeth Hall:
Holst: St Paul's Suite
Joseph Bologne: Sinfonia Concertante in G for 2 violins
Vaughan Williams: Oboe Concerto
Jessie Montgomery: Starburst
Philip Herbert: Elegy: In memoriam Stephen Lawrence
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Four Novelletten Op 52

And they have another two coming up in London in November:

https://www.chineke.org/events/european-tour-queen-elizabeth-hall

CHINEKE! CHAMBER ENSEMBLE AT WIMBLEDON INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
Saturday, 26 November 2022
19:30  20:30
St John's Church, Spencer Hill, SW19 4NZ

Performers

Chineke! Chamber Ensemble

Programme

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Nonet
William Barton: The Rising of Mother Country
Valerie Coleman: Red Clay and the Mississippi Delta
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A — the 'Trout'


And

https://www.chineke.org/events/european-tour-queen-elizabeth-hall

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL
Sunday, 27 November 2022
19:30  21:30
Southbank Centre, London, UK

Performers

Chineke! Orchestra
Leslie Suganandarajah, conductor
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, piano

Programme

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Ballade in A minor
George Walker: Lyric for Strings 
Florence B Price (Pace!): Piano Concerto in One Movement

Other concerts also coming up in October, November and March in Bristol, Basingstoke, Dublin, Grenoble, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Ottawa, Toronto.

[Dr Gradus]

I was there Dr Gradus - it was an excellent concert, brilliant. Thank you.  And yes, Fenella Humphreys really brought out the violin concerto and especially the slow second movement - real goosebumps.  I hope this was recorded, it certainly deserved to be.

I am so glad you enjoyed it!

The other day at a private event I played one of SC-T's Spiritual settings, Deep River arranged by Maud Powell, and it was quite fabulous. Also the Florence Price 1st Fantasie for violin. A distinct similarity in language between the two; the distinguished American scholar-pianist Samantha Ege says he was a big influence on black American composers.

[Christopher]

Chineke will perform more SC-T music at this upcoming concert:

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Othello Suite, Op.79

Stewart Goodyear (a contemporary composer): Callaloo - Caribbean Suite for piano & orchestra

Florence Price: Symphony No.3 in C minor

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON
Saturday, 24 June 2023
19:30 - 22:00

https://www.chineke.org/events/queen-elizabeth-hall-coleridge-taylor-goodyear-price

Callaloo is a five-movement musical fantasy, mixing Jamaican mento; Afro-Cuban guaguancó, son, conga and guaracha; and the inter-island soca.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Othello Suite, first published in 1909 and performed in 1911, is a high-drama, five-movement work.

The work, conceived as incidental music to accompany Shakespeare's play, is operatic and grand in style, with both funeral and military marches, along with lyrical, intimate moments.

Florence Price expresses aspects of her African American heritage within a symphonic framework in her Third Symphony, completed in 1940.

Avoiding direct references to existing folk songs and dances, it creates highly distinctive African spiritual moods and uses the syncopated rhythms of the juba in its jazzy third movement.

This concert is generously by supported by the Dyers' Company and through the ABO Sirens fund.

[Christopher]

There's a concert including newly-discovered SCT works on 2nd October in London's Cadogan Hall as follows:

https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/london-choral-sinfonia-in-windsor-forest/

PERFORMERS
The Choir and Orchestra of London Choral Sinfonia
Michael Waldron conductor

Join the Choir and Orchestra of the London Choral Sinfonia for their season premiere this autumn.

This concert brings together the music of two early 20th-century powerhouse composers, both pupils of Charles Villiers Stanford: Ralph Vaughan Williams and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Featuring recently rediscovered choral works by Coleridge-Taylor, the concert includes the sublime Whispers of Summer and the more energetic Sea Drift.

Alongside this, substantial works by Vaughan Williams will be performed by the Choir and Orchestra of LCS: the much-loved Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus and the magical In Windsor Forest.

Duration: approx. 2 hours (incl. Interval)

PROGRAMME

J.S. Bach (arr. Vaughan Williams) - 'Giant' Fugue
Coleridge-Taylor - Sea Drift, Whispers of Summer, Song of Proserpine, The Lee Shore, By the Lone Sea Shore
Coleridge-Taylor (arr. for strings by Owain Park) - Three Short Pieces for Organ: Melody, Elergy, Arietta
Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on Greensleeves
Vaughan Williams - Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
Vaughan Williams - In Windsor Forest

Monday 2 October 2023, 19:30

https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/london-choral-sinfonia-in-windsor-forest/#details

https://www.thelcs.org/