Coleridge-Taylor wrote his Nonet in 1894, while still a teenage student at the Royal College of Music. At its premiere that same year, The Musical Times praised the ‘fresh and vigorous’ melodic material; it certainly feels like the work of a composer full of youthful exuberance, flexing his musical muscles and taking sheer delight in trying out all the different instrumental combinations from within his unusual nine-musician line-up. That Coleridge-Taylor regarded the Nonet as a significant work...