February 18, 2019

  • Rising From Obscurity: The Music of Florence Price

     

    Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4
    Fort Smith Orchestra/John Jeter
    Naxos 8.559827
    Total Time:  69:04
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    The latest release from Naxos American Classics’ series brings an important release of music from Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) at precisely the right time of the year.  The Arkansas-born composer was the first African-American woman to have a major symphony orchestra perform her work.  That piece, her Symphony No. 1 in e (1932) received an, admittedly small, reward but it would lead to her music being further programmed by Frederick Stock in Chicago where here career really would flourish.  Price studied at the New England Conservatory with George Whitfield Chadwick.  After this, she returned to teach music in segregated schools in Arkansas and Georgia.  Eventually her and her husband decided to leave the rising racial turbulence in the South for Chicago.  In these earlier days, she taught piano and would compose a great number of pedagogical pieces for children.  The Chicago Black Renaissance was an important collective of other African-American artists and it was through these connections that her work would begin to gain broader awareness.  With opportunities to now write for orchestras and performances guaranteed, she would have the opportunity to display her talent on an even larger scale.  The present recording brings together the first of these large scale works as well as her last essay in the genre.

    For those familiar with the rise of American symphonic music, Chadwick (1854-1931) is an important figure.  His own second symphony composed in the 1880s was already well advanced in technique and ideas before Dvorak arrived the following decade to encourage composers to do what Chadwick had already been up to.  These are both important figures though for Price’s own musical development with her first symphony being cast in e minor—the very same key as Dvorak’s own ninth symphony.   Her thematic ideas here bear a close resemblance to the technique of infusing the music with the quality of a Negro spiritual or dance.  (In that respect, it is similar to the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor as well.)  Price wrote about the “compelling” quality of the spiritual to provide powerful emotional music.  The symphony here is cast in four movements.  The first is in sonata-form and has an opening idea that is decidedly folkish in quality.  The gestures here do have one foot firmly in late-19th Century Romanticism.  But there is something about the music that makes it feel just a bit different, most likely due to the way Price shapes her primary themes.  One moment even has an almost Native American quality.  These aspects certainly align themselves to Dvorak’s aforementioned work.  There are also some fascinating lyrical sections that recall Delius.  Like other American symphonies in the Romantic tradition one gets this sense of starting from the European model and then moving gradually into a decidedly American quality.  That is certainly the case here as the first movement draws the listener in with its exciting orchestral writing and drama that features pentatonic melodies and unique syncopations.  The more spiritual-like slow movement creates a rich brass moment with its decided religious overtones.  It is filled with a variety of fine orchestral touches.  The very brief third movement is modeled on an antebellum folk dance, the Juba.  Price would return to the rhythms and melodic style of this dance often (it is also the third movement of her fourth symphony).   This movement certainly pops with a quality that Duke Ellington would later explore in his symphonic pieces.  The “Finale” bounces away with great energy.  Even without these aspects, the orchestration of this piece is really stunning with such great command of the way the colors of each section can add to the general quality of the music.  Each bar makes one relish the one that follows even more.  Because most listeners are going to have mid-century film music as another aural reference, the piece will likely recall that style from time to time.  But, the work assuredly announces Price as an important figure in large-scale composition.  The final two movements do feel just a bit too short after all that we have gone through in the opening two movements giving the work a less balanced overall structure.

    This appears to be less an issue in Prices Symphony No. 4 in d composed in 1945.  The music of the opening movement maintains the rather more intense qualities like her first symphony.  The sound is beginning to morph slightly to more expansive harmonic ideas and she weaves a lot of differing lines through the music as well which kicks up the general complexity.  At the heart though are some really gorgeous themes with their nods toward Negro spirituals (“Wade in the Water” is alluded to as well).  The remaining three movements are of equal length with a little lullabye-like slow movement, another exploration of “Juba Dance” and then a final scherzo that is similar to the playful qualities heard in the earlier work.  This piece too has some parallels to Ellington’s work but one is struck by how this music is communicating Price’s own musical heritage and experience, torn between two cultural expressions that are somehow unified in her music here.

    The recording here was made last May in the warm acoustic of the ArcBest Performing Arts Center there in Fort Smith.  The orchestra certainly responds quite well to this music and captures the warmth and beauty of Price’s themes.  Percussion sometimes feels to far back in the sound sometimes.  There is an odd cymbal sound at the end of the first movement and the drums of the second movement are a bit too quite in the opening bars.  But these are minor compared to the really gorgeous sound the orchestra achieves here, especially in the slow movements.  Certainly, Price’s name deserves to be placed alongside other early 20th Century African American symphonists such as William Grant Still and William Dawson.  This is likely one of the label’s most significant releases of obscure American symphonic music in some time and is not to be missed.