Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Trio

[mikehopf]

I went to the Australian Premiere last week of Coleridge-Taylor's Piano Trio.  I was intrigued as it is not mentioned in Groves or Cobbett.  The trio was written in 1893 yet it remained in manuscript form until 2001.. It is a youthful work , rather short, with hints of Dvorak . The performers , Trio Anima Mundi,  are to record the work for their next CD. This talented and enterprising trio specialize in British piano trios  and are to play Rosalind Ellicot's Piano Trio No.1 next week. A look at their website reveals some hidden treasures in their repertoire.

BTW, on the subject of CT, when is some enterprising company going to record " Tales of Old japan"  ... easily up to the standard of " Hiawatha".

[Martin Eastick]

 I would certainly recommend the forthcoming CD by the Trio Anima Mundi for this work alone. It is the one remaining extant early unpublished chamber work by Coleridge Taylor yet to appear on a commercial CD, and, whilst of smaller stature than the Nonet Op2 and Quintet Op1, it certainly bears the hallmarks of these and other similar works by this composer. Having been present at a live performance in Croydon in 2012, which was part of a series which included most of the chamber music, I can only say that I was most impressed and only bemoaned the fact that it was too short! I'm sure others here will be more than pleased with this release..........

[minacciosa]

How wonderful to see Coleridge-Taylor's chamber music catching on and being disseminated internationally. I've played all of the C-T chamber works and while I don't consider the very early Trio to be terribly impressive, it is surely a signpost that pointed to the enormous growth the composer's music would soon demonstrate. The Nonet, the Quintet, Fantasiestucke for String Quartet, and the Op.59 Five Negro Folksongs for Piano Trio are all superior to the earlier Piano Trio. In some ways, these works are the best that ever wrote. We should hold out hope that the manuscript for his String Quartet in D minor will turn up, for it is from the prime period of his chamber music writing.

[semloh]

Thanks for posting this , Mike. It's heartening to hear SC-T finding a place in a live concert in Australia.

[Pyramus]

I was recently asked to play the piano part in the Coleridge-Taylor nonet with our informal chamber music club and managed to get my fingers round most of the notes! It's a remarkable work for a student piece, although clearly showing the influence of Brahms and Dvorak.

As a result, I bought the Chandos CD of chamber music performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective - this includes the piano quintet and piano trio as well as the nonet, all from Coleridge-Taylor's student years and probably not performed in public for more than a century. This ensemble has corrected numerous errors in the earlier performing editions, the manuscripts having remained in the RCM archive since the 1890s.

The Chandos recording of the nonet unfortunately suffers from a very prominent wind section, at the expense of the strings and piano which are on occasions difficult to hear clearly. The recording engineers must be at fault here - microphone placement? - although the balance is better in the two works without wind.

The finale of the quintet suddenly breaks into a fugue on an Irish sounding jig which seems a bit incongruous (although the subject is based on the trio from the scherzo) - but perhaps we shouldn't be too critical, considering the composer's youth....

Next up for me is the 1935 sextet for clarinet, horn, string trio and piano by Dohnányi.