The Song of Hiawatha review – Rafael Payare reveals the riches of Coleridge-Taylor’s hit cantata
Usher Hall, EdinburghFestival director Nicola Benedetti’s bold programming of these once-popular Victorian cantatas paid off with a crisp chorus and strong soloists tautly conductedThe Song of Hiawatha, Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s turn-of-the-century cantata trilogy, packed the Albert Hall for weeks on end between the wars, but it really shouldn’t work today. The unmistakably Victorian if charming score is the least of the difficulties. More problematic is the libretto: 800-plus lines of “Rum-ti Rum-ti Rum-ti Rum-ti” (trochaic tetrameter, to be…
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