コールリッジ=テイラー:合唱作品集

ロンドンに生まれ、アフリカ系音楽家のパイオニア的存在として特にアメリカで高い評価を得たサミュエル・コールリッジ=テイラー。この2枚組は彼の宗教的な合唱曲と世俗的な合唱曲が収録されており、多くは初めて録音されたものです。
コールリッジ=テイラーの合唱音楽に興味を持ち、その音楽性の深さと多様性に感銘を受けた指揮者のマイケル・ウォルドロンによってこのリリースが実現しました。収録された作品はシンプルな曲からカンタータを思わせる壮大な曲まで多彩な雰囲気をもっています。
ナクソス・ジャパン

Most of the music on this double album of music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has been rediscovered by conductor Michael Waldron, who writes that he was "shocked that all the sacred works were unfamiliar to me, particularly given how much of my early musical training was in church/cathedral music." The secular pieces (in the second of the two parts) are hardly better known. It is indeed shocking, given the high quality of the music here, and given that Coleridge-Taylor, in his own time, was best known for a choral work, the big cantata The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30. That piece is not present here, but much of this music is stirring and altogether distinctive. The problem may be that in his choral music, Coleridge-Taylor seems rarely to have explored the African and African American influences that appear in his instrumental works, although listeners will have to decide for themselves about Sea Drift, Op. 69. This high-powered piece sets not Walt Whitman but a poem by another American, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Another richly evocative sea piece is The Lee Shore, to a text by Thomas Hood. The sacred pieces are vigorous, and it does seem regrettable that they are in the repertories of so few choirs; perhaps Waldrons work will change the situation. The Magnificat from the Morning & Evening Service that is interspersed among the works in the first part is especially joyous. The London Choral Society is an amateur group, and another draw of this album is how many of the pieces are within the reach of amateur choirs; this one articulates the texts cleanly and with spirit. A marvelous release, strongly commended to those looking to incorporate more music by Black composers into their repertories or those in search of neglected choral repertories of any kind. This release landed on classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023. ~ James Manheim