Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
November 23, 2018
Nov. 29-Dec. 2; njsymphony.org.
In
1934, a year after the Chicago Symphony performed Florence Price’s
Symphony in E Minor — marking the first time music written by a black
woman was played by a major American orchestra — the composer debuted
her Piano Concerto in One Movement.
Like the powerful symphony that brought Price national attention, the
concerto draws together African-American folk music and spirituals with a
silvery Romanticism.
Though the concerto was heralded in its premiere with Price at the piano,
its symphonic version fell off the radar for decades because of missing
orchestral parts. Working with extant manuscript materials, the
composer Trevor Weston reconstructed the score, and it was successfully
performed and recorded by the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble in
2011.
As Price’s music is increasingly recognized
by a previously neglectful classical mainstream, the concerto has begun
to see the wider renown it deserves. This week in Newark and New
Brunswick, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra places it alongside other
modernist classics including Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” led by the
imaginatively improvisational pianist Aaron Diehl and conductor Joshua
Weilerstein. WILLIAM ROBIN
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