Elizabeth Llewellyn album review: All lovers of English music will want to have this 

Heart & Hereafter by Elizabeth Llewellyn is an album all lovers of English music, or of unjustly neglected curiosities, will want to have

Elizabeth Llewellyn 

Heart & Hereafter: The Collected Songs Of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor 

Orchid Classics, out now

Rating:

The British soprano Liz Llewellyn’s debut album is a labour of love. Not just in learning a lot of songs by the tragically short-lived Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) but in digging them out from all manner of places, as there’s no collected edition.

Liz and her pianist Simon Lepper have worked on this project for several years, finally making a recording after a recital at St James’s, Piccadilly, which I attended, and which showed that audiences like this stuff.

Coleridge-Taylor, the son of an English woman and a Sierra-Leonean doctor, was trained at the Royal College. Here he caught the attention of Edward Elgar, who got him going with a major commission for the prestigious Three Choirs Festival.

Liz Llewellyn (above) and her pianist Simon Lepper have worked on this project for several years, finally making a recording after a recital at St James’s, Piccadilly

Liz Llewellyn (above) and her pianist Simon Lepper have worked on this project for several years, finally making a recording after a recital at St James’s, Piccadilly

Coleridge-Taylor was a handsome man with a noble head, who would surely have remained a household name had he lived longer. As it was, his Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast was a huge hit throughout the 1920s, when it regularly packed out the Albert Hall.

This album shows his mastery of delicate melodies, and especially eloquent accompaniments.

There are poems by well-known writers such as Christina Rossetti and Robert Browning, and obscure ones like two short-lived black writers, Kathleen Mary Easmon (1891-1924) and Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

I especially loved three lyrics by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, who had the courage to live an openly lesbian life before and after the First World War.

Her well-formed lyrics drip with real passion and sensuality, to the point I am surprised that the LGBT movement doesn’t make more of her.

Liz and Simon are now working on three more Coleridge-Taylor recitals at the Wigmore Hall. Can’t wait.

In the meanwhile, this is an album all lovers of English music, or of unjustly neglected curiosities, will want to have.