Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto and Orchestral Works. BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; John Andrews, conductor; Samantha Ege, piano. BBC/Resonus (RES10374). Total time: 76:33
DIGITAL REVIEW – Over the past decade or so, the name of Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has been steadily growing in recognition among musicians and concertgoers. And now, at long last, his daughter, conductor and composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998), is beginning to get the attention she deserves. Contributing to that historical course-correction is a new album by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, under conductor John Andrews, that features the world-premiere recordings of seven of Avril’s works, plus another that is slightly better known. It is the first album dedicated solely to her music.
Avril’s father died in 1912, when she was only nine; by her teens she was already writing her own works. However, her development as a composer was cut short when she married young and had a child. The roles of wife and mother filled her with distress. After suffering a mental breakdown, she left that life behind in her late 20s and committed to building a career in music.
Although she had some success, aided by her father’s reputation, she was often frustrated by how little attention people paid to her music. This recording demonstrates that she should indeed have been considered one of Britain’s important composers during the mid 20th century.
The centerpiece is the Piano Concerto in F major, composed in 1936 and revised a couple of times in the 1970s. Each of its three movements is dedicated to people important to the composer. Pianist Samantha Ege performs this premiere with a commanding presence. The first movement, an Allegro maestoso titled “To the friends who inspired me to write this work,” vascillates between stentorian statements and sweeping, dreamlike passages. It’s an exercise in latter-day romanticism that paints impassioned images with solid orchestration.
The second-movement Adagio is a tribute to Edward Elgar, a good friend of the Coleridge-Taylor family. The delicate, pensive theme calls to mind the older English composer, and Ege’s declamation — as well as subsequent conversations with various solo orchestral instruments — exhibits a touching patience and melancholy. The concerto ends with a hearty Allegro deciso, which Coleridge-Taylor dedicated to the memory of her father. Andrews leads a boisterous performance of this movement, seeming to enjoy the lushness of the phrases and the striking textures (woodwinds suddenly on their own, a gesture by the timpani, a long and pedal-heavy unaccompanied passage for piano). Ege lets herself be carried away, taking the listener with her as she bends and stretches the rhythm.
Sussex Landscape, comprised of three slow movements, is the only work in this collection that has been recorded before. Coleridge-Taylor, alarmed and heartbroken by the outbreak of World War II, created it out of longing for what was once a peaceful countryside she loved. Rumbling timpani act like mist in the opening Largo; then come the shimmering harp and strings, and an answer in the horns. Utterly original? No. Effective? Certainly, especially in the hands of the BBC Philharmonic.
While the first movement is slightly ominous, the middle Lento e molto tranquillo has a calming sweetness, focused on the wind principals. The final largo grows into a massive, almost Wagnerian closing that well earns its marking, Maestoso. Perhaps there’s self-indulgence and sentimentality in the piece, but the fear and grief caused by wartime is explanation enough.
Another work inspired by a specific set of emotions is the Comet Prelude, drafted in 1952 while Coleridge-Taylor flew on the first-ever flight from Britain to South Africa. She was on her way to a fully booked conducting tour, believing it would change the course of her career for the better. Sadly, after a strong start, everything went wrong. Somehow, the venues that had hired her in the newly apartheid country did not know the conductor was Black (although Coleridge-Taylor did not try to hide it). Once they figured out who her father was, everyone canceled her engagements, and the tour fell apart. The only upside of that awful anecdote is the creation of Comet Prelude, the perfect capturing of joy – both the contemplative and the ecstatic kinds — in orchestral music, played with elan by the BBC forces.
The album ends with two works titled In Memoriam — one to the Royal Air Force, from 1945, and one written originally for her father in 1967, inspired by the melody of his song “When I am dead, my dearest.” Avril revised the work in 1980 after her brother, Hiawatha, died. To the R.A.F. has a beautiful solemnity worthy of Benjamin Britten, while the later work blossoms with aching, lyrical lines.
Unlike her father, Avril Coleridge-Taylor did not enjoy much recognition during her lifetime. So this recording — the first completely dedicated to her music — is not so much a resurrection as a long overdue discovery.
