Our Recording of the Month is a double disc investigating the melodic and heartfelt music of Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor by London’s Chineke! Orchestra (Decca 4853322). The story of Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra is one of classical music’s most heartening, and now they have signed a deal with Decca, no less. Coleridge-Taylor entered the Royal College of Music aged 15 on the same day as Vaughan Williams but his career was cut short when he died of pneumonia aged 37. Chineke! opens with his Othello Suite, a work of enormous personality that combines his trademark lyrical charm with an ear for orchestral dramatics. The orchestra is equally impressive in two of the composer’s more African-influenced scores: the African Suite and the Ballade in A Minor. There’s also a vivid reading of the Violin Concerto, a fine example of the genre post-Brahms, and played with silvery tone by Elena Urioste.
It’s a great month for orchestral repertoire with a bold and meaty new reading of Dvořák’s last three symphonies from...
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