Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Excerpts of 'The Bamboula Rhapsodic Dance' & 'Overture to The Song of Hiawatha' of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Are Available at LongfellowChorus.com


Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)

Charles Kaufmann of The Longfellow Chorus writes:

Hi, Bill,

I'd like to let your blog readers know that they can hear two SC-T compositions that we (The Orchestra of The Longfellow Chorus) performed during our Hiawatha Festival this past March 16 in Portland, Maine -- The Bamboula Rhapsodic Dance, 1910, and the Overture to The Song of Hiawatha, 1899, (I've edited the latter into a shortened version for the web). These can be heard as embedded mp3 files on the film synopsis web page of my documentary "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and His Music in America." Bamboula will play automatically when visiting this page, and the Overture to Hiawatha can be played using the embedded player at the top of the page:

As you'll hear, Bamboula is a fantastically virtuosic and buoyantly optimistic orchestra piece. Why this is not in the repertory of every orchestra today, I do not know except to say that that is the story of SC-T's life and music. Bamboula calls to mind a Strauss tone poem, or looks ahead to the Shostakovitch Festive Overture, but in the end, it is pure SC-T. The Overture to The Song of Hiawatha is also a wonderful piece, and, again, why this is not continually played in our time is part of the great SC-T enigma.

Thanks for posting this.

Charles Kaufmann, Artistic Director
The Longfellow Chorus
PO Box 5133
Portland, ME 04101
director@longfellowchorus.com
207-232-8920


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