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. 2025, Foyle Foundation Hall, Belfast, UK
Text included
SOMM Recordings CD0713 [68]
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was identified as a prodigious talent at an early stage; as Jeremy Dibble points out in his most interesting booklet essay, he was enrolled at the Royal College of Music as early as Christmas 1890, when he would have been just fifteen. There he studied initially with Charles Wood but before long he made the significant move into the composition classes of Stanford, who Dibble tells us, the young man “revered”. Coleridge-Taylor’s music soon attracted widespread attention but, as so often happens after the death of a composer, his music later fell into neglect, with the exception of the Hiawatha trilogy, which Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Choral Society kept before the public for many years. There has been something of a revival of interest in his output in recent years, principally on CD, and his Violin Concerto has led the way with several recordings. I must admit that the experience I’ve had to date of his larger-scale works has been mixed. I attended a performance of the full Hiawatha trilogy a few years ago and, though I enjoyed quite a bit of what I heard, by the end I’d reached the conclusion that I’d sat in that particular wigwam for rather too long (review). Earlier this year, I experienced a revival of his 1903 oratorio, The Atonement and I’m afraid I found that, though it had its moments the work was far too long and the reasons for its neglect, not least an awful libretto, were readily apparent (review). My experience of those two full-length works reinforced my opinion, based on other music I’d heard, that Coleridge-Taylor was at his best when working on a smaller canvas (though who knows what he might have achieved had he lived longer). So, I think SOMM have been very wise to select a programme of shorter orchestral works for this CD to mark the 150th anniversary of Coleridge-Taylor’s birth.
Charles Peebles’ programme has been astutely selected and one point is worth making up front. Of the seven works performed here only two of them, the Idyll Op 44 and the Ballade, Op 4, have previously been recorded. So, Peebles and SOMM earn our gratitude by expanding quite significantly the composer’s discography.
Proceedings open with the March, Ethiopia Saluting the Colours. This was inspired by the Whitman poem about the slave Ethiopia saluting as General Sherman’s troops marched by during the American Civil War. It’s a jaunty, colourful and tuneful composition which is here played very stylishly. I enjoyed what I heard, though I did come to wonder as the piece progressed whether it was not a little bit over-extended: the march takes a number of musical twists and turns, which are individually attractive but which don’t perhaps make for a taut structure. Jeremy Dibble suggests that perhaps the march was overshadowed at the time by the success of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches. I think that’s a very fair point, but I wonder also if Elgar’s marches have a much more obvious structure of march-trio-march, which Coleridge-Taylor’s piece doesn’t quite match. Still, it’s very enjoyable.
Solemn Prelude was composed for the 1898 Three Choirs Festival, held that year in Worcester. So far as I’m aware, the piece was not heard again after its premiere until it was revived at the 2021 Three Choirs, also in Worcester. I had a particular interest in hearing this recording because I was present at the concert in 2021 to review it for Seen and Heard International. Coleridge-Taylor himself conducted the premiere of Solemn Prelude. Jeremy Dibble says in the booklet that this performance was included “in a programme together with Elgar’s oratorio The Light of Life and his new (and revised) Enigma Variations“. Actually, I’m not sure that’s quite right, though there’s some confusion over this. In the programme book for the 2021 Three Choirs Festival there’s a short article about the work which states that Solemn Prelude was premiered “alongside the new version of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations”. However, the definitive History of the Festival by Anthony Boden and Paul Hedley states very clearly that the Solemn Prelude was played at a morning concert on 13 September in a truly monster programme which also contained the Brahms Requiem, The Light of Life and the Dvořák Te Deum (can you imagine sitting through all that?) According to Boden/Hedley, Enigma was given at a separate concert that same evening, with Elgar again conducting his own work. If indeed the Solemn Prelude was just the amuse-bouche before three meaty choral works it was probably completely overshadowed that day in 1898 but was the subsequent neglect of the piece justified? I don’t think so. I understand that the orchestral parts of the Prelude were lost after the premiere but the full score came to light quite recently. From that it was possible to prepare a new edition of the work which was used for the 2021 revival and also, I believe, for Charles Peebles’ recording. Jeremy Dibble describes Solemn Prelude as “stirring in its gravity and elegiac pathos”. I’d agree. To my ears, it evidences the influence of Parry and Stanford, and it’s none the worse for that. It seems to me to be more tightly structured than the March which precedes it on this CD. I was impressed when I first heard it in 2021 and this fine recording has reinforced that view. It’s a good piece, which was worthy both of revival in the first place and now a recording.
Zara’s Earrings is a strange piece. It’s a setting – described as A Moorish Ballad – for solo soprano and orchestra of a poem by John Gibson Lochart (1794-1854). The poem voices the anxiety of Zara who has lost the earrings given to her by her lover, Muça: will he think her careless – or worse – when he returns? I think it would be kindest to describe the poem as being ‘of its time’. To be honest, as in The Atonement, Coleridge-Taylor saddled himself with a pretty dreadful text. From the musical perspective, the poem allows no real respite; the emotions are strong and there’s no opportunity for contrasting calm music. Soprano Rebecca Murphy enters fully into the spirit of the piece but her singing is consistently full-on – for which you can blame the composer, I suppose – and I found it rather wearying. Jeremy Dibble tells us that this was the composer’s first piece involving orchestra and I should record that the scoring is colourful and attractive. However, I doubt I’ll be rushing to listen again to Zara’s Earrings.
Idyll is a rather different matter. This was composed for the 1901 Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester. I gather it’s a reworking, with expanded scoring, of the second movement, ‘Lament’, from Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony in A minor, Op 8 (1896). I haven’t heard the symphony, though there has been at least one recording of it (review). Once again, Jeremy Dibble is on the money in describing the Idyll as a “gentle, poetic essay”. I’m unable to comment on the extent to which this version of the music compares with what Coleridge-Taylor wrote in his symphony but Idyll comes across in this excellent performance as very pleasant and well-crafted. I liked it.
The longest piece on the disc, here playing for 15:26, is the Ballade for Violin and Orchestra in D minor. This brings to the fore the Irish-born violinist Ioana Petcu-Colan (both her parents are Romanian violinists) who combines a career as a teacher and soloist with her role as Leader of the Ulster Orchestra. The piece is not new to CD, though I’ve not heard it before. It struck me as being quite rhapsodic in nature; Jeremy Dibble points out the narrative aspect of the writing. The piece is very attractive and seems to be very well written for the solo violin; in that respect you can surely relate it to the much later Violin Concerto in G minor, Op 80 (1912). Ioana Petcu-Colan is a splendid soloist; she characterises the solo part very successfully and also brings out all the poetry in the music. Her colleagues in the Ulster Orchestra give her fine support. I enjoyed both music and performance.
The Entr’acte from the incidental music to Nero is part of the music which Coleridge-Taylor composed for a play written by Stephen Phillips (1864-1915), which began a run of performances in 1906. It seems from the booklet notes that Coleridge-Taylor provided seven numbers for the play but Jeremy Dibble tells us that it’s not possible to say at what point in the play this particular Entr’acte was played, though he thinks it’s probably the movement depicting Nero’s mother Agrippina. It opens with a ravishing violin solo (another example of the artistry of Ioana Petcu-Colan, I presume) but the music that follows is mainly strong and dramatic in character. It’s an interesting offering; Peebles and the orchestra deliver it very well.
It may seem odd to say that the programme finishes strongly given that the concluding piece is gentle in character but Romance in B for string orchestra (1895) is a most appealing piece. Like the Idyll, the Romance is a reworking of an earlier composition. In this instance, Coleridge-Taylor took the second movement, Larghetto affettuoso of his very successful Clarinet Quintet, Op.10 (1893) and re-imagined it for string orchestra. The result is very successful; the music is genuinely inspired and it seems to me to fit the medium of the string orchestra like a glove. The present performance is beautifully judged and it provides a touching and most effective conclusion to this CD.
With the one exception that I’ve mentioned, I enjoyed this programme very much. It does reinforce my feeling that Coleridge-Taylor was most successful when working on a smaller canvass, though the Violin Concerto gives an indication that he might have successfully expanded his art to larger forms had he lived longer. Whilst one might not describe any of the individual pieces here recorded as ‘great’ music, they are all good pieces and well worth hearing. The music is very well served indeed by Charles Peebles and the Ulster Orchestra and it’s welcome that so much of the programme is new to disc.
SOMM’s production values are, as usual, very high. The sound is extremely good; producer Siva Oke and engineer Ben McAuley have recorded the orchestra very truthfully. Jeremy Dibble has provided an expert essay about the music.
This is a worthy 150th anniversary tribute to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
John Quinn
Previous reviews: Jonathan Woolf (October 2025) ~ Nick Barnard (November 2025)
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