Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint L’Ouverture; Ballade in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 4; 24 Negro Melodies—Selections and Suite. Curtis Stewart, violin; National Philharmonic conducted by Michael Repper. AVIE. $19.99.
Berlioz: Neuf Mélodies—Selections; Britten: Thomas Moore Melodies; Sarah Gibson: Breath’d Back Again. Benjamin Brecher, tenor; Sarah Gibson and Robert Koenig, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.
The British-born Sierra Leone Creole, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), straddled two worlds throughout his life. He was of mixed race; he was born in England but visited the United States, to which he had family ties, and thought seriously of moving to the U.S.; he was both composer and conductor; he faced the sort of discrimination typical in his time, but was received at the White House by Theodore Roosevelt; he created one enormously successful work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (he even named his son Hiawatha) – but he sold the music outright and so did not benefit from it financially; he was named Samuel Coleridge Taylor, without a hyphen, but adopted the hyphenated name after a printer’s error. He was respected and assisted in various ways by Edward Elgar, Charles Villiers Stanford, and poets Alfred Noyes and Paul Laurence Dunbar – and King George V gave his widow an annual pension. But his music, aside from his one great success, languished after his death, and many of his works remain totally unknown. For example, his concert overture Toussaint L’Ouverture, written in 1901 as a tribute to the Haitian general and political leader, was first recorded as recently as 2023. Now Michael Repper and the National Philharmonic are drawing attention to Coleridge-Taylor through an AVIE disc that provides a reasonable introduction to his music and showcases its strengths as well as the extent to which it reflects and is bound by its composer’s time. Toussaint L’Ouverture opens the CD and is filled with assertiveness, fanfares, well-constructed contrasting sections that represent the personal life of the titular figure, and an overall sense of triumphalism that verges on hagiography. Its main point of distinction is the inclusion of some elements of an African musical idiom within the European style in which the composer was trained. A fusion of African and European elements was to be a feature of much of Coleridge-Taylor’s music, although it scarcely dominates in a work such as the Ballade in D minor of 1895, which gives the solo violin (played with considerable feeling by Curtis Stewart) a great deal of beauty and lyricism within a strictly Romantic orchestral setting. In contrast, the 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59, No. 1 of 1905 are a much more direct attempt to incorporate African material into European concert forms: Coleridge-Taylor specifically wanted to follow the path that Brahms trod for Hungary and Dvořák for Bohemia. The Suite was orchestrated by Coleridge-Taylor himself and edited in 2012 by Patrick Meadows and Lionel Harrison. After two movements associated with America (Nos. 14 and 12 from the original set), it presents one from South Africa (No. 5), one from Southeast Africa (No. 4), and one from West Africa (No. 7). The soaring lyricism of the Intermezzo: Don’t Be Weary, Traveler is a highlight, as is the expressive sadness of the Lament: They Will Not Lend Me a Child. This Lament also appears as the second in a separate set of three selections from 24 Negro Melodies, this grouping being a 2022 arrangement for violin and orchestra by Stewart and others. This specific piece is more delicate but less emotive in the violin version, and becomes rather more of a virtuoso showpiece than is seemly. The first and third of the selections (Deep River and The Angels Changed My Name) are both associated with America. The former has some elements of sweetness, the latter some sense of yearning, but both seem to exist mainly as display works that do no favors to the underlying material. It is nevertheless worthwhile to hear a variegated program of Coleridge-Taylor’s music, and although the disc shows him to be very much a composer of his era, without a great deal of innovative thinking beyond the desire to incorporate material from Africa into his works, the CD also offers an interesting chance to experience music that has lain fallow for more than a century and is certainly worth at least an occasional revival.
The backdrop is not Africa but Ireland on an MSR Classics release featuring three composers’ handling of the thoughts and words of Thomas Moore (1779-1852). Berlioz’ 1829 treatment of Moore’s poetry – translated into French by Thomas Gounet (1801-1869) – is a rarity and is perhaps better known as Irlande than as Neuf Mélodies. It is a bit disappointing to have only five of the songs on this disc – the CD runs only 55 minutes, so there was plenty of room for the entire group – and in fact the emotional expressiveness of the settings, and the well-modulated delivery of tenor Benjamin Brecher, whet the appetite for more. The lyricism and rocking motion of La belle voyageuse are especially pleasant, as is the delicacy of Le coucher du soleil. The piano, played by Robert Koenig, has only a supporting role in the Berlioz songs, but it is considerably more significant in Britten’s Thomas Moore Melodies (1957), the fourth volume of Britten’s Folksong Arrangements. Brecher sings all 10 of these, and Koenig ably brings forth the piano’s percussionist tendencies, through which Britten underlines, emphasizes, interprets and comments on some of Moore’s poetry. The flourish that opens The Minstrel Boy, introducing a song of considerable intensity, contrasts well with the straightforward forthrightness of both voice and piano in Rich and Rare; the piano helps build The Last Rose of Summer from verse to verse, heightening the growing vocal intensity throughout; and the concluding song, O the Sight Entrancing, has an attractive jauntiness in which the piano insistently leads the singer along, uplifting the verbal mood. Also on the CD is the world première recording of the Moore-based Breath’d Back Again (2022) by Sarah Gibson (1986-2024), with the composer on piano. Here too the piano’s centrality is crucial to the communicative power of the verbiage, with the instrumental part in fact being front-and-center in a very unusually conceived work that, in essence, deconstructs Moore: Gibson takes a word or phrase from multiple Moore poems (the work’s title is one such) and juxtaposes them to create a Gibson poem made from Moore building blocks – and propagated as music by its pianistic elements. This is the most rarefied element of a CD that is already esoteric enough to be of only limited interest – the styles of Berlioz and Britten are themselves discordant, even without the inclusion of Gibson’s work. Still, the Berlioz and Britten handlings of Moore contrast in intriguing ways for anyone inclined to study Moore first and then delve into the composers’ differing settings of his works. And Gibson’s rethinking – best heard after the other works despite being placed first on the CD – comes across as a fascinating gloss on these 19th- and 20th-century approaches to Moore. So although this disc will not likely have wide appeal, the audience that does find it appealing will discover a great deal here to think about, enjoy, and then think about some Moore – err, more.
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