For some people, any attempt to broaden the classical repertoire to include non-white, non-male composers smacks of wokery, but it isn’t about throwing Beethoven out with the bath water. It’s about finding new perspectives, uncovering neglected music that will enrich, not impoverish, our enjoyment and understanding.
Few ensembles have done as much to decolonise the repertoire as Chineke!, founded by bassist Chi-Chi Nwanoku in 2015 as Europe’s first professional orchestra of black and ethnically diverse musicians. The name, from Nigeria’s Igbo language, could be roughly translated as “Oh my God!”, the exclamation mark suggesting both surprise and pleasure. That’s what orchestras are for, isn’t it?
Conducted by Kellen Gray, this final concert of its 2022/23 season featured three black composers from three different eras. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Othello Suite, composed for a 1911 London production of Shakespeare’s play, is incidental music, here delivered with no little swagger. Its five movements depict particular passages in the play, not always the most dramatic, but Chineke! put enough fire into its Funeral March to suggest a mildly riotous celebration while the intertwining clarinets of the Children’s Intermezzo had a delicious sensuality.
What followed was a musical eulogy for horn player David Dickerson, a Chineke! founder member who died a week ago in San Francisco. The music chosen for the tribute was a brief excerpt from Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America. Price’s music has undergone a dramatic reappraisal in recent years and Chineke! has made something of a speciality of playing her orchestral works.
The concert closed with her Third Symphony (1940). She was a musical conservative but she always sought to bring her African American heritage into the classical tradition, not least for the haunting melodies that it offered. The symphony opened in lugubrious mood but hints of blues and hymn tunes soon intruded, while the third movement “Juba” (a dance term she used in several pieces) was distinctly hoedown-ish. Grey and his players had the required momentum, but they also achieved the balance between weight and transparency that her rich orchestration demands.
Price’s symphony was the headline work on the programme but, impressive as it was, it was overshadowed by the sheer flamboyance of the piece that preceded it. Callaloo is a zesty concerto celebrating the Caribbean heritage of its Canadian composer, Stewart Goodyear. He is also a gifted pianist and took the daredevil solo part, filled with mighty fistfuls of notes and dizzying rhythmic shifts.
It wasn’t all headlong and hectic. Afterglow, the third movement, glided slinkily while the following cadenza had Goodyear playing alone, building inexorably towards the crowd-pleasing finale, a workout for the whole orchestra, percussion in particular. An exercise in precisely controlled manic frenzy, Callaloo was as exhilarating as it was exhausting, not least for the players, whose smiles suggested that they’d enjoyed it just as much as the audience.
