Samuel Coleridge Taylor ‘Novelletten No 1 and No 3’

Digital Season recorded live at Leith Theatre and available for a year

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Stephanie Gonley director

Film by Matosilva, sound by Calum Malcolm and Cameron Malcolm

In the last few years, classical concerts, operas – notably in the States – and broadcasts have made a conscious effort to promote work by a diverse range of composers. This was something which I didn’t foresee four years ago when I wrote two articles for the Edinburgh Music Review about the mixed-race British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 1875-1912. A BBC broadcast later that year on ‘forgotten black composers’ heralded a change in attitude, and Coleridge-Taylor’s work was very soon being performed live and in excellent recordings by, among others, the Chineke Orchestra, Elizabeth Llewellyn and Simon Lepper, and by members of the Kanneh-Mason family.  When Donald Macleod featured Samuel Coleridge-Taylor for the second time on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Building a Library’ in 2022, he found that most of the music he played had been recorded in the previous few years.  The series was repeated two weeks ago and is available on BBC Sounds. Nevertheless live performances of his work are relatively infrequent: I heard Elizabth Llewellyn sing some of his song for the first time at the Edinburgh International Festival this year, and on Thursday will have my first chance to hear a live performance of his last completed work, the ‘Violin Concerto.’

Meanwhile the first item in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 2024-25 Digital Programme, a beautifully filmed performance of Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Novelletten No 1 and No 3’ is now available online. Stephanie Gonley directs the 24-strong string orchestra, (good to see Ruth Crouch again) with percussion -a tambourine and triangle - played by Louise Lewis Goodwin. Coleridge-Taylor, the son of a Sierra Leonean medical student and an English mother, was brought up in the household of his English grandfather, Benjamin Holmans, who worked as a farrier. He played the violin and taught Samuel to play. Coleridge Taylor’s love for the instrument is clear in ‘Novelletten’, a four-part work composed in 1902 when he was 27, possibly based on the Robert Schumann’s piano miniatures of the same name, and one which he frequently programmed in his own concerts.

The SCO perform the first and third movements in a typically vigorous fashion which brings out the richness of the melodic and rhythmically interesting score.  The recorded sound of the live performance in Leith Theatre is excellent – I’d advise listening on headphones.  No 1 (allegro molto) begins with a swirling Viennese waltz highlighted by the sparkling triangle.  A more reflective melody initially in the lower strings slows the pace before the return of the first theme accompanied by a heartily shaken tambourine -the third outing for the instrument this season.

‘Novelletten No 3’  marked ‘valse’ is slower and begins with a wonderful solo violin part for Stephanie Gonley, playing over a lush accompaniment before percussion heralds  a more lively central section. Coleridge-Taylor was an admirer of Dvorak, and here his skill in creating folk-like melodies, often with that familiar feeling of a tune we’ve heard before, certainly matches the Czech composer.  There’s time for another lovely violin solo before the shimmering conclusion.

I highly recommend this thirteen-minute film. Tickets are still available for Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Violin Concerto’, played and directed by Anthony Marwood on Thursday 24th October at 2pm in the Queen’s Hall in a concert which also includes Dvorak’s ‘Romance’ and  Schubert’s ‘Symphony no 2’.

 Find ‘Novelletten No 1 and No 3’ at: Digital Season: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Novelletten | Scottish Chamber Orchestra

 My articles  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — Edinburgh Music Review (please note corrections in the comments) and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Pt 2 — Edinburgh Music Review are still online  Written before the upsurge in interest in his works, these pieces focus on what I and others knew about the composer in 2020. The link to the US conference held on the centenary of his death in 2012 is worth following up, with input from African American performers of his work and from his biographer, Jeffrey Green, who speaks about Coleridge-Taylor’s working-class background.