Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Ethiopia Saluting the Colours (March), Op.51 (1902)
Solemn Prelude, Op.40 (1899)
Zara’s Earrings Op.7 (1894)
Idyll, Op.44 (1901)
Ballade for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op.4 (1894)
Entr’acte 1 from the incidental music to Nero, Op.62 (1906)
Romance in B for string orchestra after the Clarinet Quintet, Op.10: II Larghetto affettuoso (1895)
Rebecca Murphy (soprano): Ioana Petcu-Colan (violin)
Ulster Orchestra/Charles Peebles
rec. June 2025, Foyle Foundation Hall, Ulster Orchestra at Townsend, Belfast
Text included
Somm CD0713 [68]
Other than the Idyll and Ballade everything here is a première recording – and that includes the arrangement of the Romance, which is an adaptation for string orchestra derived from the slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet. Coleridge-Taylor has enjoyed a good time on disc over the last decade but new impetus has been provided by the 150th anniversary of his birth, which falls this year.
The March, Ethiopia Saluting the Colours, was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem which depicts General Sherman and his troops encountering an elderly enslaved woman, Ethiopia. Cresting on a wave of Elgarian ceremonial – Pomp and Circumstance No.1 had been published the previous year, and there’s a not-so-coded quotation of it in this piece– it may have been dedicated to the ‘Treble Clef Club, Washington, USA’ but it’s about as American as spotted dick and custard. It is also at 10 minutes, at least four minutes too long.
Solemn Prelude was written for the 1899 Three Choirs Festival at Worcester at a concert in which Elgar’s The Light of Life and the revised Enigma Variations were performed. There is a welcome amount of nobilmente and fine easy-going lyricism despite the appellation of ‘solemn’, though it’s not always at the highest level of Coleridge-Taylor’s invention. Zara’s Earrings is a ‘Moorish Ballad for soprano voice and orchestra’ which sets a truly execrable text by John Gibson Lockhart (d.1854) with its constant refrain of ‘alas! I can not tell’ ending ‘as they lie in the well’. Trust me, it’s better you don’t know the rest. Though it’s called a Rhapsody it’s in effect a rather boisterous operatic scena along Dvořákian lines – one can just about imagine it in one of his lesser operas – and is sung in committed but rather squally fashion by Rebecca Murphy. The vocal line certainly doesn’t always sound grateful.
The Idyll, Op.44 is an attractive piece that wears its Brahmsian-Elgarian inheritance not just on its sleeve but on its buttons too. The Ballade for violin and orchestra is played with leisurely assurance by Ioana Petcu-Colan though note that a competing version, just released on Avie by Curtis Stewart, is a good two minutes quicker. The Entr’acte No.1 from the incidental music to Nero, Op.62 fuses the ceremonial with effective theatre music to good effect. Which leaves the Edwardian charm of the Romance after the Clarinet Quintet, played here with warmth and distinction by the Ulster Orchestra and Charles Peebles.
Indeed, they play everything here finely. The notes are very helpful and if the recording is a touch studio-cool, I soon warmed to it. This potpourri offers largely unknown Coleridge-Taylor in effective performances. Does it tell us anything about him that we didn’t know before? No. But it delves into his work list and gives us an opportunity to hear more of him, and that can’t be a bad thing.
Jonathan Woolf
Other review: Nick Barnard (November 2025)
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