TheGuardian.com: 'The Song of Hiawatha – review' by Andrew Clements

[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. We are collaborating with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation of the U.K., www.SCTF.org.uk]

The Guardian

Monday 5 August 2013
Andrew Clements

Each year the Three Choirs festival tries to include a major work that has become unfashionable and fallen out of the regular choral repertory. Last year at Hereford it was George Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims; this time in Gloucester it was the work that made Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's name, The Song of Hiawatha.

Between the two world wars, Coleridge-Taylor's cantata-trilogy was so popular that each year the Royal Albert Hall devoted a fortnight to semi-stagings conducted by Malcolm Sargent, complete with costumes, scenery and involving up to 1,000 performers. Nowadays even the first part, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, is rarely heard, so the complete performance in Gloucester cathedral with Peter Nardone conducting the Festival Chorus, the Philharmonia and soloists Hye-Youn Lee, Robin Tritschler and Benedict Nelson was a brave attempt at rehabilitation.