Monday, August 1, 2016

Salt Lake Magazine: Beethoven Festival in Park City: The second half was taken up by one work, Coleridge-Taylor’s substantive Quintet in F sharp minor.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.


The Beethoven Festival Park City, Utah’s oldest summer classical music festival, is celebrating its 33rd season this year and continues to do what it’s done so well for so many years — presenting great chamber music played by some of the country’s best musicians.
The secret to the festival’s continued success is simple — present standard repertoire side by side with overlooked works, all played by veteran musicians as well as rising young stars.
That was exactly what the audience expected, and got, at a concert last week — Felix Mendelssohn paired with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, with a pair of delightful violin showstoppers by Pablo de Sarasate thrown into the mix. Performing this music were festival directors Leslie Harlow, viola, and Russell Harlow, clarinet. They were joined by festival favorites Manuel Ramos, violin; Doris Stevenson, piano; and Cheung Chau, cello. Rounding out the roster was the young violinist Simón Gollo, making his festival solo debut, although he has played here previously as a member of the Dalí Quartet.

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The second half was taken up by one work, Coleridge-Taylor’s substantive Quintet in F sharp minor, for clarinet and strings. Written in 1895 when the composer was 20 years old, the quintet has hints of Brahms and Dvorak running through it, although it by no means is an imitative work. Coleridge-Taylor, a composer who was prolific and popular in his day but who has fallen to the wayside in the intervening decades, has a distinctive voice that melds romantic passion with florid lyricism and moving expressiveness in a uniquely original manner.
The five players — Russell Harlow, clarinet; Ramos and Gollo, violin; Leslie Harlow, viola; and Chau, cello — brought depth and feeling to their reading. It was an incisive and wonderfully textured and lucid performance that emphasized the romantic sensibility of the music without compromising its integrity.  

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