Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
Naxos 8.559827 (2019)
Tom Huizenga
January 21, 2019
In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of Symphony No. 1 by a then little-known composer named Florence Price. The performance marked the first time a major orchestra played music by an African-American woman.
Price's
First Symphony, along with her Fourth, has just been released on an
album featuring the Fort Smith Symphony, conducted by John Jeter.
Fans
of Price, especially in the African-American community, may argue that
her music has never really been forgotten. But some of it has been lost.
Not long ago, a couple bought a fixer-upper, south of Chicago, and
discovered nearly 30 boxes of manuscripts and papers. Among the
discoveries in what turned out to be Price's abandoned summer home was
her Fourth Symphony, composed in 1945. This world-premiere recording is
another new piece of the puzzle to understanding the life and music of
Price, and a particular time in America's cultural history.
Price
was born in 1887 in Little Rock, Ark. Her mother gave her music lessons
since none of the leading white teachers in town would take her. In
1904, Price enrolled at the New England Conservatory in Boston, one of
the few music schools to accept black students at the time. After
earning two diplomas, she returned to Little Rock, where she taught, got
married, and began raising a family. But racial tensions were on the
rise, and a downtown public lynching in 1927 triggered a move to
Chicago.
There, Price blossomed as a composer. Her First Symphony won a composing
prize, which caught the attention of conductor Frederick Stock, who led
the premiere of the piece with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The
music is a blend of two traditions — African-American and European. The
opening movement is reminiscent of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, with
its portentous sweep and lyrical melodies.
Price might be searching for her own voice in her First Symphony, but
she adds distinctive touches. Cathedral chimes glisten in the serene
slow movement, where a brass choir converses with delicate winds. In the
third movement, African drums accompany a syncopated "Juba Dance," a
folk tradition that originated in Angola and moved, with slaves, to
American plantations.
Price and her music were well received
in Chicago. The great contralto Marian Anderson closed her legendary
1939 Lincoln Memorial concert with a piece arranged by Price. Still, she
scraped to make ends meet, writing pop tunes and accompanying silent
films. In 1943, she sent a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of
the Boston Symphony Orchestra, acknowledging what she was up against. "I
have two handicaps," she wrote: "I am a woman and I have some Negro
blood in my veins."
But Price pushed on. Two years later, she wrote her final symphony, the newly resurrected Fourth.
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