A composer's South African journey

One of the passengers on the Comet, the first commercial flight in 1952 between Britain and South Africa, was 49 year old composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor. Feeling sidelined by the English classical music establishment, this mixed-race woman hoped for greater opportunities abroad, and after acclaim from the critics she became the first woman to guest conduct the Cape Town Orchestra in September 1952.

Dr Leah Broad has been piecing together Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s life from the letters, scrapbooks and newspaper clippings that were stored in her family’s house after she died in 1998. In this Essay, part of a series showcasing new research into the history of classical music, we hear part of Coleridge-Taylor's piece The Comet Prelude, inspired by that journey, and Leah Broad traces the sad ending to these travels.

Leah Broad's biography of four other female composers Quartet won the Royal Philharmonic Society Storytelling Award. Her essay was produced by Kirsty McQuire

The recordings you hear in the Essay are part of Avril Coleridge Taylor's The Comet Prelude performed by the BBC Philharmonic in a new recording, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason playing Avril’s father Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s arrangement of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, pianist Samantha Ege playing the third movement of Avril Coleridge-Taylor's Piano Concerto in F minor performing with the BBC Philharmonic, and a BBC archive interview recorded with Avril Coleridge-Taylor