Florence Price Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Er-Gene Kahng, Violin
Janacek Philharmonic
Ryan Cockerham, Conductor
Albany Records Troy 1706 (2018)
Albany, New York
Joseph Dalton, Classical Notes
Friday, March 2, 2018
Last month the Capital Region's music scene was smack in the middle
of a national trend – the revival of music by the late Florence Price.
The Musicians of Ma'alwyck and the Capital Trio teamed up to offer two
performances of Price's "Negro Folk Songs in Counterpoint." Almost
simultaneously Albany Records issued a CD of Price's two violin
concertos. Feature stories appeared in the New Yorker and The New York
Times.
Price was an African-American woman composer, which means
she started with two strikes against her. I've already written here
about her failed attempts to get Serge Koussevitzky's attention. But she
wasn't completely overlooked during her time. She wrote upward of 50
pieces for Marian Anderson. Her arrangement of the spiritual "My Soul's
Been Anchored in the Lord" was the final selection in Anderson's
legendary performance on the National Mall in 1939.
***
The First Violin Concerto is the more traditional of the two. It's
cast in a traditional three movements and is in the key of D major, as
are the violin concertos of Tchaikovsky and Brahms. The writing is at
its best and most original in the passages that feel homespun and
playful. The flatted third, the traditional blues note, is prominent in
at least a couple of spots during the opening movement.
The Second Concerto is a blast. It's a brisk one-movement
in which Price keeps throwing open doorways to different styles and
languages. Such hopscotching around the musical map presages cartoon
music and postmodernism. Granted, that's reading a lot into the piece,
which doesn't come off as radical at all. To the contrary, the concerto
would fit comfortably in any traditional orchestra program.
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