Soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn has been a familiar figure on the British operatic scene, and for her debut album, she could easily have chosen a set of Verdi and Puccini arias. Instead, she has done something quite unexpected, although in line with her own background and interests. Finding the songs of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor not only unrecorded but out of print, she set about assembling a group of them for performance and recording, gathering them from quite diverse sources. Coleridge-Taylor was a student of Charles ...
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Soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn has been a familiar figure on the British operatic scene, and for her debut album, she could easily have chosen a set of Verdi and Puccini arias. Instead, she has done something quite unexpected, although in line with her own background and interests. Finding the songs of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor not only unrecorded but out of print, she set about assembling a group of them for performance and recording, gathering them from quite diverse sources. Coleridge-Taylor was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, and his style lies somewhere between his teacher's and that of Elgar, sometimes inclining more toward the semi-popular salon, with a great deal of interest added by the texts. Some come from conventional sources, Robert Browning and Christina Gabriel Rossetti, although Llewellyn, in her perceptive notes, finds an affinity on Coleridge-Taylor's part for the writings of female poets, but others are quite unusual. There are the Seven African Romances by Paul Laurence...
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