SOMM Recordings marks the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) with a diverse selection of his orchestral works, reflecting both his Afro-British parentage and a musical milieu that included Holst and Vaughan Williams. Of particular note is that five of the seven works presented here are first recordings. This commemorative release features the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Charles Peebles, whose first recordings of Piano Concertos by Dora Bright and Ruth Gipps for SOMM were widely praised.

It was quickly apparent that Coleridge-Taylor possessed an unusual talent, and he produced a remarkable body of work before his untimely death at 37 – though much of his music has been hidden from public view by the absence of surviving performance material. He composed his first work for voice and orchestra, Zara’s Earrings, when he was just 19. Rebecca Murphy, hailed by Opera Journal for her “stunning delivery,” is the featured soprano.

The Ballade, also written when Coleridge-Taylor was 19, was premiered by Isabella Donkersley, the future wife of Augustus Jaeger (soon to be immortalised by Elgar as “Nimrod” in his Enigma Variations). The Ballade’s great drama and charismatic melodic material play to the strengths of Coleridge-Taylor having been a violinist. Ioana Petcu-Colan, heard here, is leader of the Ulster Orchestra and a soloist of considerable reputation.

When Coleridge-Taylor heard Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet while a student at the Royal College of Music, he was encouraged to write his own. The Romance for string orchestra is an arrangement of the quintet’s introspective Larghetto affettuoso movement.

Solemn Prelude, written for the Worcester Three Choirs Festival of 1899, is a work of elegiac pathos exuding the confidence of a young composer reaching the height of his powers. Since its modern revival in 2021, it’s been performed by some of the world’s most distinguished orchestras.

Coleridge-Taylor’s Idyll, a commission for the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival in 1901, was a reworking of the Lament from his Symphony in A minor. When he conducted its first performance, the Times critic wrote, “it was a single, very beautiful movement in C major…giving ample room for the composer’s love of original rhythm and rich and individual orchestral colouring.”

Ethiopia Saluting the Colours from 1902 is an exuberant work for orchestra and organ. It was inspired by Walt Whitman’s moving poem paying tribute to an elderly Ethiopian woman encountered during the American Civil War.

Beerbohm Tree commissioned the incidental music for Stephen Phillip’s play Nero in 1906, and the chance for Coleridge-Taylor to hear his music nightly rather than as one performance in the concert hall was a particular joy. This anniversary collection includes the first Entr’acte, which also featured at the 1907 Proms under Henry Wood.