Catalyst Seeks to “Uncover” Neglected Composers

courtesy of Morahan Arts and Media

At the beginning of this month, Azica Records released the first volume in a series planned by the Catalyst Quartet entitled UNCOVERED. Given the difficulties with delivery due to pandemic conditions, the album is currently only available for MP3 download. Amazon.com has created a Web page for this purpose, which includes all the tracks but not any accompanying booklet of program notes.

The objective of Catalyst’s project is to “uncover” artists in classical music that have been overlooked, especially because of race or gender. The ensemble, now in its second decade, consists of violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Jessie Montgomery, violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez. However, Montgomery announced her departure from the quartet after this album was recorded; and Abi Fayette has joined Catalyst to replace her.

The “uncovered” composer on this first release is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was born in London on August 15, 1875 and died relatively young, at the age of 37 on September 1, 1912. He visited the United States three times early in the twentieth century, where he was particularly popular for having composed three cantatas based on excerpts from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. According to his Wikipedia page, New York musicians referred to him as the “African Mahler.”

One is unlikely to find reinforcement for that epithet on the new Catalyst album. The first selection is his Opus 1 piano quintet in G minor (with Stewart Goodyear joining the Catalyst musicians), which he composed in 1893. Of the three works on the album, this is the one most likely to resonate with the following assessment on that Wikipedia page:

Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, which he considered Johannes Brahms to have done with Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák with Bohemian music.

To my own ears, there is little evidence of either African or Bohemian tropes; but both the thematic and rhetorical content show ample signs of Dvořák’s influence.

The other selections on the album are the Opus 5 “Fantasiestücke,” composed in 1896, and the F-sharp minor clarinet quintet, Opus 10, composed one year earlier. The title of Opus 5 may have reflected on Robert Schumann, but Schumann only applied it to solo piano music. Coleridge-Taylor’s string quartet could just as easily have been called a suite, although labeling the middle movement “Humoresque” may have been a nod to both Schumann and Dvořák. The clarinet quintet, performed with Anthony McGill, probably offers the best account on this album of Coleridge-Taylor’s own voice.

Taken as a whole, the album is clearly a journey of discovery. The question is whether Catalyst has made the case that it is a journey worth taking. Their performances are dutiful, but I did not find them particularly compelling. I was left wondering whether Coleridge-Taylor would have been cast in a better light in a recital setting in which one could appreciate how his music could stand up for itself in a context of more familiar composers.