American themes at Aldeburgh: Tony Cooper enjoys a quartet by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson & an absorbing orchestral programme highlighting Elizabeth Ogonek.

Sphinx Piano Quintet: Nathan Amaral, Elena Urioste, Celia Hatton, Sterling Elliott, Amiri Harewood - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: BPA)

Perkinson: String Quartet No.1 ‘Calvary’, Vaughan Williams: Rondo for Piano, Still: Suite for Cello and Piano, arr. Randall Goosby, Cassie Kinoshi: Songs of Kinship, Bridge: Phantasie Piano Quartet, Price: Piano Quintet No.1; Sphinx Piano Quintet (Nathan Amaral, Elena Urioste, Celia Hatton, Sterling Elliott, Amiri Harewood); Britten Studio, Snape Maltings

Elizabeth Ogonek: All These Lighted Things, Ravel: Piano Concerto in G, Ryan Wigglesworth: Piano Concerto, Ravel: La Valse; Steven Osborne, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 14 June 2026 

In the afternoon at the Aldeburgh Festival, the first quartet by black American composer, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, proved a revelation particularly with its fusion of classical-based music tinged with the genre of jazz and blues.  An absorbing and exciting evening programme came from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra highlighting the music of American contemporary composer, Elizabeth Ogonek. 

I was more than interested to learn more about 1932-born black American composer, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, who was on the bill for the Sphinx Piano Quintet’s concert at the Britten Studio, Snape Maltings. Specifically named in honour of the celebrated Afro-British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) reflected his parents’ admiration for black excellence in classical music. 

He wrote a couple of string quartets in quick succession and his first quartet entitled ‘Calvary’ was the first item on an excellent programme curated by the Sphinx Piano Quintet, a dynamic artist-driven chamber ensemble formed under the acclaimed Sphinx Organization established in Detroit by Aaron P. Dworkin in 1996. A social justice and educational enterprise, Sphinx is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts with a specific mission to champion exceptionally talented black and Latinx classical musicians. 

Both men were trailblazers of their day bridging classical music with their respective black heritage. Samuel was a renowned composer in late 19th-century London while Perkinson was a highly-versatile American composer whose work, although based on the classical idiom, also employed the genre of jazz and blues. Therefore, Perkinson’s first quartet, a three-movement work written in 1956, blends a traditional classical-based format with elements of jazz, blues and spirituals.  

A poignant, deep and sorrowful song ‘Calvary’ focuses on the Crucifixion and, therefore, is rooted in the experience of enslaved Afro-Americans with the song’s text using biblical imagery of Golgotha as a parallel to human suffering ultimately emphasizing endurance, faith and salvation. 

This enlightened and absorbing programme by Sphinx continued with a three-minute piece by Vaughan Williams (a rare outing, I should imagine!) entitled Rondo for Piano from Suite of Six Short Pieces, loosely styled after early 18th-century English Tudor and Baroque keyboard suites, effortlessly played by London-based pianist of African descent, Amiri Harewood. 

And with William Grant Still’s Suite for Cello and Piano, black America was once more at the forefront of Sphinx’s concert. A vibrant three-movement work, it’s inspired by the Harlem Renaissance sculptures arranged by virtuoso violinist Randall Goosby for cello and piano who expanded its expressive and soulful colours while preserving the rhythm of the blues and melodies of the original composition. 

Broken into three distinct movements, each one takes its inspiration from a specific sculpture created in the 1930s. In the first movement ‘African Dancer’ (based on Richmond Barthé’s sculpture) a powerful unified opening declamation, tinged with swinging, bluesy, dance-like rhythms, was energetically played at rapid speed by Sterling Elliot, a dynamic cellist who, with Amiri Harewood on piano, truly captured the rawness and essence of the composer’s writing. 

The second movement ‘Mother and Child’ (based on Sargent Johnson’s sculpture) a tender, soulful and lyrical movement, evoked a feeling of reverence and warmth which slowly gave way to the last movement ‘Gamin’ (based on Augusta Savage’s sculpture) summing up a playful, animated and cheeky character capturing the buoyant spirit of urban youth. 

Former student of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Cassie Kinoshi, offered a couple of short pieces scored for piano quintet to this all-inspiring concert by Sphinx with ‘stillness’ and ‘two meditations’, receiving their world première. The essence of both works witnessed performers breathing and improvising through a series of chord progressions with sound, breath and slowness being central to the quietness and the evolution of the piece. 

The second half comprised a couple of well-loved repertoire works - Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet and Florence Price’s Piano Quintet No.1 - which truly showed off the precise, detailed and excellent playing by members of the Sphinx Piano Quintet - Nathan Amaral violin, Elena Urioste violin, Celia Hatton viola, Sterling Elliott cello and Amiri Harewood piano. Please take a bow!

Steven Osborne, Ryan Wigglesworth, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Angus Cook, © BPA)

The evening’s show was given over to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth basking in radiant glory following huge success in a couple of semi-staged performances of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Snape Maltings directed by Rory Kinnear [see Tony's review]. 

The concert opened in a burst of orchestral colour with Elizabeth Ogonek’s All These Lighted Things commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Subtitled ‘Three Short Dances for Orchestra’, the name comes from a line by poet/philosopher, Thomas Merton, expressing the relief one feels after the darkness of night fades and the sunrise re-emerges and re-invigorates the world with this thoughtful and well-perceived work portrayed through three contrasting movements totalling just under 15 minutes. 

A fantastic and lively piece, the first movement is exuberant, bright and playful offering a kaleidoscope of textures and tempi while building a three-dimensional and unbelievable thrilling sound world witnessing the fine players of BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth engaging in a cacophony of sound propelling power, magnitude and strength. 

A somewhat distorted atmosphere lies at the heart of the second movement witnessing the leader of the orchestra carving elegant curves across a cavernous vibrating bassline while the meditative nature of the movement never becomes boring or turgid but gently flows to the last bar while the final movement opens with the likes of fairies and wood-sprites, dutifully closing with clumsy and ungainly spirits with heavier footprints.  

But there were many references to the first movement not least by the sparkling and imaginative percussion team knocking on the door with everything they had at hand while screaming strings and raging woodwind structured a vast musical canvas that made this highly exciting and enjoyable work tick better than a grandfather’s clock! For sure, a blazing start to a blazing concert with Maestro Wigglesworth completely unfussed but totally in control of an orchestral score seemingly out of control created by Ogonek’s thrilling piece of writing. 

And when the celebrated Scottish pianist, Steven Osborne, appeared on Snape Maltings immortal stage to play Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, he received a hero’s welcome. A brilliant, light-hearted, three-movement work, Ravel was influenced in its writing by the genre of jazz as well as Basque folk music. 

A surprise opening comes with a crack of a whip and the work launches into a set of fast jazz-infused rhythms that set the Snape Maltings alight while the slow second movement centres around a breathtakingly long unbroken piano solo melody before the work ends in a fast, virtuosic and bustling sprint to the finish line revisiting the lively rhythms of the first movement that more than delighted a packed house and by the looks of his facial expression delighted Steven Osborne, too. 

After the break, Osborne (a featured artist at this year’s festival) was back on stage. This time as soloist in Ryan Wigglesworth’s four-movement Piano Concerto dating from 2019 jointly commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  

Scored for a full orchestra, the solo piano part is neither bravura nor particularly virtuosic and all the four movements are studies in character. The opening bars slowly awaken into an intriguing sound world with the piece then revisiting musical history with piano and orchestra engaging in a quizzical and sometimes combative conversation on subjects such as folksong, chorales and gigues. 

For instance, the first movement comprises a short, intimate chorale-like piece; the ‘second’, fast-paced with a gentle central trio; the ‘third’, set to variations on a Polish folk melody while the last movement offers a lively dance-like finale that features a battle between the piano and orchestra ending in an explosive cadenza in which Osborne took all in his stride. 

Therefore, if Osborne’s versatile and responsive style was perfect for the Ravel concerto, it was most certainly perfect for Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto, too. I found myself totally absorbed into the piece right from the start with the opening bars commanded and led by woodwind (flutes at the fore) ushering in the pianist playing a range of sporadic and individual notes before brass and strings take over engaging in a fulfilling, colourful and orchestral sound that stamped the credentials of Ryan Wigglesworth not just being a conductor and a musical servant but a composer of merit and one to be reckoned with. 

A remarkable performer, Osborne treated the audience to a jazz-influenced encore before ‘marching’ off stage maybe going for a cool pint of Adnams at the ‘local’ - the Plough & Sail. Showing his dexterity as a pianist, Osborne performed a solo jazz gig in a late-night show at the Pump House - a Fringe event that sold out as fast as a pair of silver darlings (herrings) on an ice-cold slab! 

Serving as a truck-driver on the Verdun front during World War I, Maurice Ravel has the last word, though, with Wigglesworth and his ‘Scottish wonder band’ found in full flight delivering a rewarding and polished account of the composer’s graceful and thoughtful work La Valse which praises the legendary waltz from elegant beginnings to an increasingly wild end.  

The single-movement work creates and builds into a dark misty atmosphere gradually breaking into a grand and lush Viennese waltz and as the music progresses grows and grows swirling all over the show while devolving into a dissonant chaos and a screeching metallic destruction found in the traditional waltz signifying and highly suggesting the destruction of 19th-century society following the chaos and impact of the Great War. 

In fact, the sheer scale of the destruction permanently altered the cultural, technological and political fabric of the 20th century reshaping global society by dissolving four vast multi-ethnic empires: German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires with the British empire following in their wake. The ending of the war also established modern international relations and accelerated sweeping domestic changes such as expanded labour reforms and voting rights for women. Give it a whirl, girls: ‘Shout, shout, up with your song / Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking / March, march, swing you along / Wide blows our banner and hope is waking.’ Amen! 

 

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