A Lighter Side of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

courtesy of Naxos of America

This Friday Naxos will release the latest (fifth) installment in its British Light Music series. Both the album and the series were previously released by Marco Polo; and, as of this writing, that is the version for which Amazon.com has created a Web page. However, Presto Music, based in the United Kingdom has created a Web page for the Naxos reissue which is processing pre-orders.

Coleridge-Taylor was a prolific composer; and this site has already discussed the epithet that declared him to be the “African Mahler.” He certainly knew how to compose on a large scale, which included three cantatas based on texts from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic Song of Hiawatha. Ironically, this site has, to date, focused almost entirely on Coleridge-Taylor’s chamber music; and there is a certain irony that the recording legacy of his large-ensemble music is currently being circulated under the “light music” rubric.

In writing about the chamber music I found it useful to reflect on how Coleridge-Taylor had been influenced by Antonín Dvořák, who, in turn, had been (positively) influenced by Johannes Brahms. Readers will probably not be surprised to learn that those influences do not figure in the “light music” of this reissue. The closest one gets to the serious is the opening track, which provides the overture for Coleridge-Taylor’s cycle of Hiawatha cantatas. It is also worth observing that two of the selections are arrangements of the composer’s music that were prepared after his death. The first of these is a four-movement Gipsy Suite, arranged by Leo Artok; and, on the album, this is followed by Percy Fletcher’s arrangement of “Romance of the Prairie Lillies.”

The performances are by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, affiliated with the Irish national broadcasting organization. The ensemble is conducted by Adrian Leaper, and interpretations are consistently satisfying. Nevertheless, it is hard to overlook the possibility that the Coleridge-Taylor legacy would be better served by an effort to account for his Hiawatha cantatas.