BPO –The Romantics: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Mahler –Elena Urioste (violin), Alice Farnham (conductor)

There’s a very good reason that Coleridge-Taylor’s work was so popular 100 years ago, and it holds good today. His music was always top-of-the-class and his appeal, then as now, was on outstanding merit not tokenism. Of mixed-race descent, he has many champions these days. Brightonians had the chance to hear his melodious Violin Concerto only last Spring (Peter Davison with Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra & Braimah Kanneh-Mason). Elena Urioste has taken this work around the world and delivered it with great passion. It’s always a good sign when the orchestral players are smiling – today they were grinning, such was their appreciation. The Dome audience were still roaring approval when Urioste played a strange rambling theme. Leader Ruth Rogers clearly didn’t recognise it – until the second verse which slowly emerged as Over the rainbow (Harold Arlen) in a sensuous and playful arrangement. The applause took off again,wildly invigorated!

Elena Urioste

From the opening doom-laden fanfare to the end of the mercurial Fifth movement, Alice Farnham kept tight control, building and releasing the tension as Mahler lurches the mood from mortality to thrill and to yearning. She allowed the harp space to wring our hearts in the luscious Adagietto that, ever since Visconti used it for his 1971 film, conjures up the fatal waters of Venice. Outside was hammering the first heavy rain of autumn but under the Dome’s roof we were transported to another time, a vanished epoch. I was left wondering, why hasn’t BPO given us more Mahler? They seem to have a taste and talent for it.

Andrew Connal
Brighton Dome Concert Hall,
19 October 2025

Rating:

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – Violin Concerto in G minor

Mahler – Symphony no. 5