The 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 technical) from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. More challenging still is a story that shows the Native American Hiawatha endorsing his country’s colonisation by “people with white faces”.
Rafael Payare did not know Hiawatha before Nicola Benedetti invited his Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal to give this Edinburgh international festival premiere, but he conducted with commitment and verve. Tightly coiled yet expansive of gesture, he never let the tension drop. The occasional drawbacks of his approach – soloists denied flexibility and space; chorus not guided towards longer phrases and quieter singing – were outweighed by the rewards. Payare highlighted the cantatas’ thematic and tonal connections and was alert to their dancelike character.
