New Classics

Of the five English composers featured here, only two are really known at all – the intriguing Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (for his cantatas inspired by on the epic poem, Song of Hiawatha, by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Rutland Boughton (for his fairy tale opera The Immortal Hour), but all wrote wonderful music in Romantic style.

Born in 1857, Rosalind Ellicott became one of the leading female composers of her generation, having much success with performances in the 1880s before moving from orchestral to chamber music. Comparatively little of her work has survived apart from a few songs and instrumental works, including the Piano Trio No. 1 included here. James Cliffe Forrester, composer of the delightful Folk Song Fantasy, was less prolific, concentrating on his teaching career, but has a fine impressionist voice. Harry Waldo Warner studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London as a pupil of Orlando Morgan and was well known as a violist and member of the very successful London String Quartet. He composed two operas, over a hundred songs and several chamber works, including this Trio for piano, violin and cello.

These world premiere recordings of rarely heard but masterful compositions are played with sensitivity and panache by the excellent Australian ensemble Trio Anima Mundi – Kenji Fujimura (piano), Rochelle Ughetti (violin) and Noella Yan (cello). This acclaimed Trio is one of Australia’s finest chamber ensembles and since its founding in 2008 it has won several international awards, including the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Prize. The Trio has often unearthed and performed unjustly forgotten works as well as playing some of the newest pieces of today.

—John Pitt