Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
World-Premiere studio recordings.

Toussaint L'Ouverture; Ballade Op. 4 for Violin and Orchestra; 5 Negro Melodies (arr. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor) - I’m Troubled in Mind - Intermezzo: Don’t be Weary Traveler - Scherzo: Ringendjé 'Song of Conquest' - Lament: They Will Not Lend Me a Child - Finale: Alla Marcia 'Oloba'; 3 Negro Melodies Deep River (Curtis Stewart and Hamilton Berry, arrangers); They Will Not Lend Me a Child (Curtis Stewart and Andrew Roitstein, arrangers);The Angels Changed My Name (Curtis Stewart, arranger).

National Philharmonic Michael Repper, conductor
Curtis Stewart, violin

Avie Records AV2763
https://www.avie-records.com/

This album, belatedly marking the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's birth, proves well worth the wait. The National Philharmonic deliver delicious performances of works that reveal this British composer's remarkable gifts.

The disc opens with the 17-minute tone poem Toussaint L'Ouverture, depicting the Haitian revolutionary general. Fusing African musical elements with European form, it evokes the symphonic style of Dvořák, one of Coleridge-Taylor's heroes. It's a fine demonstration of his compositional skill.

Curtis Stewart provides wonderful warm playing in the rhapsodic Ballade in D minor (1895), an early work for Coleridge-Taylor's own instrument, the violin, that displays his youthful promise.

The album's highlights are the Negro Melodies. Coleridge-Taylor drew inspiration from his African heritage and African American spirituals he encountered visiting the United States in 1904. His 24 Negro Melodies for piano (1905) attempted, as he said, to do for these melodies what "Brahms has done for Hungarian folk music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian."

Here we get a newly uncovered suite of five orchestral arrangements by Coleridge-Taylor himself, unpublished in his lifetime, paired with three modern reimaginings by Stewart, Hamilton Barry, and Andrew Roitstein. These brilliantly devised contemporary arrangements really make their mark—acknowledging the music's impact on popular culture while creating community in the concert hall.

The National Philharmonic play splendidly throughout, creating lovely musical pictures. With excellent booklet notes by Lionel Harrison, this imaginative release provides an invaluable opportunity to revisit Coleridge-Taylor's unjustly neglected music.