TheGuardian.com: Wood; Coleridge-Taylor; Delius: Violin Concertos CD review – a mixed bag made convincing [Chandos 10879]

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a complete works list by Dr. Dominique-Rene de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com

Chandos CHAN 10879 (2015)

The Guardian

October 22, 2015

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Concerto dates from 1912, the year of his premature death, and more than a decade after he had earned the undying gratitude of choral societies around the country with his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. It’s a patchy but striking work – with echoes of Elgar and (in the slow movement) even Puccini, as well as the more predictable Dvořák – which probably deserves to be heard more often than it is. I’m not sure the same can be said for Haydn Wood’s 1928 Concerto, with its overblown medley of hand-me-down romantic styles – a bit of brash Rachmaninov here, a mellow Elgarian tune there – though as always Little and Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic try hard to make it all seem convincing.