Live Broadcast from 92Y ($10).
Program
Mendelssohn, String Quartet in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1 (1838)
Coleridge-Taylor, Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 (1895)
New York Philharmonic members
Yulia Ziskel, violin; Na Sun, violin; Cynthia Phelps, viola; Nathan Vickery, cello.
How much the concert can be enjoyed depends very much on how well the internet is working at the moment of broadcast. Today the network was somewhat unstable. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the Mendelssohn piece and learned something about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The clarinet quintet probably would sound better if one gets more familiar with it, although the last movement was quite easy to like.
The movements of the compositions are as follows. For Mendelssohn: (1) Molto allegro vivace; (2) Menuetto: Un poco Allegretto; (3) Andante espressivo ma con moto; and (4) Presto con brio. For Coleridge-Taylor: (1) Allegro energico; (2) Larghetto affecttuoso - Molto espressivo; (3) Scherzo. Allegro leggiero; and (4) Finale. Allegro agitato - Poco piu moderato - Vivace. Coleridge-Taylor also supplied the tempo for the various movements.
A few things I learned about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He was born in London in 1875 and died in Surrey in 1912 from pneumonia. His mother was English, his father a physician from Sierra Leone who returned to Africa not knowing he had left a pregnant woman behind. He was named after the poet Samuel Taylor Colerdige, and at some point added the hyphen to his name. A musical prodigy, he enrolled at the Royal College of Music at age 15 and eventually studied composition. During one of his many visits to the US, he was nicknamed the "African Mahler." His work supposedly drew on African music in the same tradition as Brahms with Hungarian music and Dvorak with Bohemian music.
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