Samantha Ege piano
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
John Andrews conductor
Resonus RES10374
Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903 – 1998) has been overshadowed by her father Samuel, but also by her heritage as the daughter of someone regarded as being of mixed descent, from Sierra Leone and Britain. Having undergone a breakdown in mental health in the late 1920s, she was discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm for her music and after the Second World War, accepted an invitation to perform in Johannesburg. Initially she seemed to find the recognition that had eluded her in Britain.
Later, when her parentage became known in a country under apartheid, she was prevented from working; contracts were cancelled and she found herself stranded in a hostile country without even the means to book a flight home. She eventually managed to return, but her confidence, understandably, was shaken.
Yet, despite the adversity she encountered, she never seems to have lost faith in her music. The main work here is the Piano Concerto of 1936, (later twice revised), a work which met with some success and that received a number of performances after its premier in 1943. This is a large-scale work that requires a virtuoso technique on the part of the soloist. For this listener the musical idiom seems to belong to the same world as that of her father, which should be regarded positively.
However, at the time she was writing, others were experimenting with greater freedoms and one suspects that Coleridge-Taylor’s music struck some as being too conservative. The final movement is dedicated to Samuel, but one can understand why some might have interpreted this as a lack of self confidence in her own musical language.
The other pieces on this disc are slighter than the concerto, but well-wrought and with what would seem to be a confident approach to orchestral sonority. There is a great deal to enjoy here and the BBC Philharmonic play with conviction. The conductor John Andrews seems to have an unerring touch when approaching music which is little known, having been little performed. Samantha Ege is a most persuasive soloist, and she makes light of the formidable technical difficulties. All those involved are to be congratulated for insuring that these performances far transcend mere routine efficiency.
Review by Martyn Strachan