Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges: String Quartets;
AFKA SK-557 (2003)
[Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) is featured at AfriClassical.com]
Dominique-René de Lerma writes:
Exploring Music, the only such program known
to me which is available internationally, on 31 March has begun a
second series of two weeks dedicated to Black music. The host, Bill
McLaughlin, has again fallen back on Eileen Southern's Music of Black Americans
for stimulus. Eileen's book was certainly a welcome and influential
landmark when it was first published by W. W. Norton on the urging of
Barry Brook in 1971. In the third edition (1997) she updated her
information and corrected past errors of which she had been painfully
aware. Even so, one should consult Arthur R. LaBrew's 111-page website...if seeking to be overpowered by his
musicological virtuosity and to observe a hint of lacunae in the works
of others.
The initial
program in the series surveyed a wide area of unrelated examples, from
Ghana to the Sea Islands, from Marian Anderson to Saint-Georges. In the
latter case we heard the F-minor string quartet (opus 14, no. 3) in a
performance by the Apollon Quartet, displaying a French version of Sturm und Drang (Avenira AV 276011, issued in 2005).
An even better case and performance would be the second quartet n G
minor from the 1777 set, performed by the Coleridge Quartet on AFKA Records SK-557 in 2003.
Earlier than Saint-Georges was Vicente Lusitano in the 16th century, whose startlingly chromatic Heu me Domine
has been recorded and is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDb0uvOrsX0. Watch: someone will dub him
"the Black Gesualdo!"
Waiting for us in this first week are Florence Price, Harry Burleigh,
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Paul Robeson, Eartha Kitt, Leadbelly,
Natalie Hinderas, and Joplin -- a bewilderingly diverse cast, many of
whom will be introduced for the first time to a large audience of Bill's
loyal followers -- and, let us hope, a few new activists.
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Dominique-René de Lerma
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