January 2, 2014

  • Sargent's Classic Hiawatha Resurfaces

     

    Coleridge Taylor: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast; Dvorak: Symphonic Variations
    Richard Lewis, tenor. Royal Choral Society, Philharmonia Orchestra/Sir Malcolm Sargent
    IDIS 6672
    Total Time:  53:57
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    IDIS Classica is an Italian label that has gotten its hands on a variety of great classical recordings of the mid-20th Century.  One of them is this classic recording pairing a lesser Dvorak work with a piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

    There was a time when the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)  was the (illegitimate) son of a British woman and a Sierra Leonean Creole doctor.  He was brought up his mother’s brother who was an accomplished musician and he would eventually study at the Royal College of Music.  His composition teacher was Charles Villiers Stanford.  His work thus comes at an important time in the flowering of British orchestral music.  It does not have that sense of Imperial grandeur one associates with the work of Elgar, but instead follows much closer at times to early work by Frederick Delius, though Coleridge-Taylor’s music is still firmly rooted in 19th Century writing.  Upon the 50th anniversary of his death, Sir Malcolm Sargent committed to disc what is arguably one of the best recordings of the composer’s most beloved work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.  This work, premiered in 1898, was a tremendous success and allowed the composer to travel to America where he hoped to do for serious African music.  He was even invited to the White House by then President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.  Having sold this work outright however, the composer never received any royalties from its subsequent success which would continue long after his death.  The piece is cast in four sections for tenor with exquisite choral writing that certainly falls well within the British choral tradition.  Beautiful solos for tenor are well managed by the great Richard Lewis, though there is a bit of reverb from the studio in his sections.  Beginning in 1929, Sir Malcolm Sargent championed the composer’s work and it was not uncommon for the piece to appear on oratorio society productions often rivaling Handel’s Messiah in popularity for the period.  This 1962 recording features great imaging of the choir and orchestra and is really crystal clear.  Perhaps it will lead to rediscovery by a new generation of music lovers, though tracking down this new release will be done best online.

    Dvorak’s Symphonic Variations, Op. 78 was almost relegated to the unperformed pile of 19th century music after its first performances in 1877.  The great conductor Hans Richter essentially resurrected the piece in a series of famous London concerts a decade later.  Supposedly it is one of the more performed sets of orchestral variations.  It features a brief thematic presentation and then some 27 variations over its brief 22-minute playing time.  The present release features Sargent’s classic 1959 recording.  There are very many great recordings of this work.  The 20+ currently in the catalogue all provide distinct interpretive approaches that are part of each conductor’s overall approach to Dvorak.  Here we have simply a great “filler” or the primary reason to discover a now lesser known work.

    IDIS has done nothing much other than prepare a CD for publication.  The booklet is barebones with absolutely no documentation other than the year of the studio recording.  The price appears to be hovering around $18 which is horribly overpriced for the package itself but one cannot expect this to be a “chart-busting” release.  If you can find it at a good discount it is certainly worth adding to your library if you do not have these performances in previous incarnations.  Perhaps Naxos will eventually get around to exploring other work by Coleridge-Taylor in the future.