This album marks the debut of the minority-oriented Chineke! Orchestra on the Decca label, and it is quite a promising beginning indeed. Perhaps the African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a natural choice for the group, but even with his 21st century revival, it seems to be the same few pieces that are played and recorded over and over, focusing on the traces of African-American music and African music in his work. Hearing a lot of his music together in one place is something of a revelation, for his melodic gift seems inexhaustible. Sample the Romance for violin, Op. 39, and one will see why some of Coleridge-Taylor's contemporaries dubbed him "the Black Dvořák"; it is a much better moniker than the "African Mahler" nickname bestowed during his U.S. tour. Indeed, even in the African Suite, Op. 35 (an arrangement of a piano work), the African element, though it is there, is minimal. Another big attraction here, and the explanation for the nonspecific Coleridge-Taylor title, is the presence of the tone poem Sussex Landscape, Op. 27, by Coleridge-Taylor's daughter Avril, dating from the mid-'30s. Though not on the cutting edge of British music, it is a fine, evocative work with a plangent English horn part. The young orchestra plays with not only enthusiasm but also precision in live as well as studio tracks, and the group seems to be offering not only a mission but musical value.
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