History has been unfair to the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, but this belated premiere recording of his Violin Concerto in G minor -- intended to redress the neglect -- may inadvertently give the impression that this composer's music cannot stand on its own without bolstering comparisons to works by his greater contemporaries. Pairing this work with Dvorák's Violin Concerto in A minor creates expectations of parallels that are unnecessary and misleading, for Coleridge-Taylor is only tangentially linked to the Bohemian ...
Read More
History has been unfair to the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, but this belated premiere recording of his Violin Concerto in G minor -- intended to redress the neglect -- may inadvertently give the impression that this composer's music cannot stand on its own without bolstering comparisons to works by his greater contemporaries. Pairing this work with Dvorák's Violin Concerto in A minor creates expectations of parallels that are unnecessary and misleading, for Coleridge-Taylor is only tangentially linked to the Bohemian master through a shared interest in African-American spirituals as thematic material. Other than that, Coleridge-Taylor's modest Concerto seems more attuned to currents of British light music in the Edwardian era; its strengths and weaknesses should be judged in that context and in light of his other accomplishments, but not against Dvorák's unavoidably superior masterpiece. With that caveat, Coleridge-Taylor's Concerto is a fine work of youthful ingenuity and fin de sičcle ...
Read Less
