Florence Beatrice PRICE (1887-1953)
Symphony No 1 in E minor (1932) [40:06]
Symphony No 3 in C minor (1938) [31:34]
Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin
rec. 2021, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Verizon Hall, Philadelphia
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4862029 [71:14]
I’m a great fan of the music of Florence Price, so was delighted when this new release of her First and Third Symphonies came my way. Three years ago I reviewed Symphonies 1 and 4 on the Naxos label. Following years of neglect, her music is now attracting interest and, as a consequence, a growing number of concert performances and recordings have emerged of late.
Florence Price was born into a mixed-race family in 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father was a dentist and her mother a music teacher, who gave young Florence some initial tuition. At the age of fourteen she entered the New England Conservatory in Boston to study piano teaching and organ. Her teachers included composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. After graduation in 1906, she returned to Arkansas to teach, before relocating to Georgia in 1910. In 1912 she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer, and moved back to Little Rock. A series of racial incidents there resulted in another move, this time to Chicago. This was the city where her career as a composer, teacher and concert pianist was finally launched. She eventually divorced, and a consequence of raising her two daughters as a single mother left her in financial hardship. On June 3, 1953 she died of a stroke. She was only 66.
It’s a tragedy that Price not only faced the barriers of race and gender, but influential figures in the musical world at the time underestimated her worth as a composer and turned down her requests for performance opportunities. She has about 300 compositions to her name, being best-known for her art songs and arrangements of spirituals. In addition, there are orchestral, choral, chamber and works for piano and organ. Following her death, interest in her music declined due to changing tastes and styles. In 2009, a collection of her scores was discovered in Illinois, including two violin concertos and the Fourth Symphony. Her music is steeped in the European tradition, yet embodies an American idiom and reveals her Southern roots.
The composer wrote four symphonies, all traditionally laid out, and all infused with African-American spirituals. Sadly the Second Symphony is lost. In the remaining three symphonies, the scherzo third movement is replaced with a Juba, described in the accompanying booklet as “an elaborate form of clapping and body slapping that originated in West Africa”.
In September 1932, Price’s Symphony No 1 in E minor won a prize at the Rodman Wanamaker contest for African-American composers. The work attracted the attention of Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony, and on 15 June 1933 he premiered it. It was an event of immense significance as Price became the first African-American woman composer to have a work performed by a major orchestra. The first two movements are heavily indebted to Dvořák. The whole work brims over with melodic richness, peppered throughout with African-American spirituals. The slow movement’s chorale writing reminds us that the composer was an accomplished organist. A Juba Dance acts as a third movement, lit with foot-tapping syncopations and brightly coloured instrumentation. A fiery Presto finale ends the symphony in upbeat manner.
In 1938, the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Music Project commissioned the Third Symphony. It was premiered in Detroit on November 6, 1940 after a revision by the composer. Once again, according to a contemporary music critic, Price “spoke in the musical idiom of her own people”. It opens in solemn mode. The slow movement is exquisitely crafted, its mood is reflective and prayer-like, conveying peace and serenity. The sun truly comes out in the buoyant Juba third movement, awash with captivating sonorities. Price calls time with a final movement exuding cheery optimism and gusto.
The DG engineers have done the Philadelphia Orchestra, under their conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, proud in achieving a finely balanced recording in first-class sound. Nézet-Séguin is meticulous in his attention to orchestral detail and instrumental colour. I hope the Fourth Symphony will follow in the not too distant future.
Stephen Greenbank
Previous review: Néstor Castiglione
