United Kingdom Coleridge-Taylor, Goodyear, Price: Stewart Goodyear (piano), Chineke! Orchestra / Kellen Gray (conductor). Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 24.6.2023. (CK)
Coleridge-Taylor – Othello Suite
Goodyear – Callaloo – Caribbean Suite for Piano and Orchestra
Price – Symphony No.3 in C minor
After the opening item, Chi-Chi Nwanoku – double bass player and founder of Chineke! – spoke of two recent losses: the mother of Stewart Goodyear – about to perform his Callaloo – had died the previous Sunday; on the day before that, horn player David Dickerson had been killed in a hit-and-run in America. The orchestra played a brief and touching piece by Florence Price – His Resignation and Faith – in their memory. Chineke! does not need me to extol its impact on British cultural life and beyond; but somehow this deepened our awareness of the inclusivity, connectedness and care which are an important part of what Chineke! stands for. Every player has a biography in the programme book. When the conductor takes his bow, they all bow in unison. Add an enthusiastic and vocally supportive audience, and you have quite a callaloo.
The idea of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor collaborating on a production of Othello with the fearsome actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree (known to me as a boy from my cigarette card collection) is rather comical. This Othello Suite is very engaging: an opening Dance, brassy and briefly lyrical, leads to a charming Children’s Intermezzo in which a tender melody on a pair of clarinets is taken up by the strings and flowers gorgeously in the full orchestra before a quiet close. The opening of the Funeral March on tolling timpani inevitably recalls Mahler’s First Symphony: though lacking Mahler’s subtlety it is effective enough, not least in its bleak conclusion. The Willow Song is the most memorable of the five movements, the solo trumpet tugging at the heartstrings. It is something of a disappointment when the suite ends – as suites are apt to – with a Military March: in dramatic terms a let-down, and in musical terms lacking in distinctiveness – barely distinguishable from countless other such marches crowding the ‘light music’ airwaves. The orchestra, under conductor Kellen Gray (South Carolinian, but currently working with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) played it for all it is worth, and perhaps more. My wife’s immediate response to Chineke! was ‘They are a class act!’
To do justice to Stewart Goodyear’s playing in Callaloo I would probably have to exhaust the thesaurus entries under ‘dazzling’ and ‘phenomenal’. And he composed it as well. ‘A blend of Calypso and Lisztian pianism’, he writes, and, more revealingly, ‘Callaloo is my soul food … a dish from the Caribbean composed of taro leaves, coconut milk and spices from different cultures deliciously blended together.’ It is a piece that demands astonishing virtuosity: here it got just that, and not only from Goodyear at the piano. Showmanship, glittering pianism over shuffling percussion: Gershwin with an unmistakably Caribbean accent (Bernstein’s Mambo was in there somewhere too). The opening Panorama was followed by two quieter sections: Mento (a Jamaican folk style) was spookily playful with muted horns and lower strings; Afterglow brought woodwind, gentle percussion and more gorgeous colours in the piano accompanied by the violas. ‘The atmosphere is that of a siesta’, writes Goodyear, ‘and the colour is that of a golden sunset’; yet to my ears this music had the starlit quality of the Largo from Lou Harrison’s wonderful Piano Concerto (I would like to hear Goodyear play that).
The riotous finale was preceded by a Cadenza for piano: jazzy, musing, increasing in complexity and fire over a pounding bass (at one point I scribbled ‘Rachmaninov’), climactically bursting into the Soca. It was carnival time in the Queen Elizabeth Hall: brilliance at the keyboard, a trio of saxophones, blasts of brass, boisterous percussion (rimshots going off like rifles), another wild cadenza for two bongo drummers, timpani and trap set, and a final witty argument between piano and orchestra about who gets to provide the final flourish.
We needed the interval after that, and so did Florence Price, if she was going to get a fair hearing. I have a memory – maybe I dreamt it – that a few seasons ago the Boston Symphony Orchestra were going to play her Symphony No.3 at the BBC Proms. For some reason it didn’t happen, but since then I have been curious about the composer and the piece. Price was not raised in an East Coast cultural milieu; she was from Little Rock, and she found her voice as a composer after moving to Chicago. She was the first African American woman to have her music played by a major US orchestra.
The first surprise was the confidence suggested by the size of the orchestra: standard full brass and triple woodwind (three flutes plus piccolo), harp, timpani and a percussion section requiring five players. The opening of the Andante – solemn, almost Brucknerian brass, and a lithe theme launched by cellos with emphatic percussion – sounded disconcertingly European; the first American sounds came from a gorgeous Spiritual-like tune on trombones, garlanded with woodwind and strings and reaching an eloquent climax. A folk-like tune on the violin, taken up by the orchestra, led to a grandiose conclusion, abruptly cut off. The second movement, also Andante (ma non troppo), begins with a lovely tune on the cor anglais; there is eloquent writing for the woodwind and brass choirs, then for the strings and harp: a touching blend of Copland-esque open-air honesty and the feeling of a Spiritual. The Allegro too (entitled Juba) is as catchy as Copland on the ranch or Ives on holiday, with a sly tune on muted trumpet abetted by woodblock and sliding trombone, and later on xylophone with crooning horns.
Price clearly had her own ideas about the sequence of movements in a symphony: the fourth movement is headed Scherzo: Finale. It sets out purposefully, optimistically, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere. A brief interlude for flutes and piccolo, then off we go again, eventually reaching a maestoso conclusion that sounds tacked on. Price is hardly the first composer to have a finale problem: and it makes the listener realise afresh how original and eloquent the rest of the symphony is. The reception was warm; the skilful conductor Kellen Gray led the orchestra in another unison bow, and we went home happy.
Chris Kettle