Post by erik on Dec 9, 2023 19:48:16 GMT -5
Neglected for several decades after her passing in 1953, the African-American composer Florence Price has experienced a renaissance of considerable proportions over the last ten years. One reason is because of the symphony of hers that is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight.
Florence Price: SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN D MINOR
With the explosion of works from non-White American composers becoming huge recording and concert favorites with American audiences in the 21st century, one composer stands out in particular. That composer is Florence Beatrice Price, who lived from 1887 to 1953, and who, with her First Symphony, became the first African-American woman composer to get a work of hers performed by an orchestra in her own country (in 1934, with Frederic Stock conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Sadly, because of the despicable Jim Crow laws that existed in the United States, her name and her works were in danger of slipping into total oblivion. Then in 2010, a huge treasure trove of manuscripts of her works was found in a home outside of Chicago; and very soon, those works found their way into the American classical music bloodstream. It was known that Ms. Price had actually written four symphonies; but, due to exigencies beyond anyone’s control, the Second Symphony (said to be in the key of G Minor), seems to have been irrevocably lost to time. However, despite decades of neglect, her Fourth Symphony, composed in 1945, finally got its first recording in 2019, thanks to the efforts of conductor John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra in Arkansas. Like its two existing predecessors, this symphony is full of African-American rhythms, including the pre-ragtime “Juba” dance; and it also contains nominal references to Antonin Dvorak’s Seventh and Ninth symphonies. Price’s Fourth Symphony gained has gained even more prominence in the 2020’s as the result of the Deutsche Grammphon recording (which includes the Negro Folk Symphony of another great African-American composer, William Levi Dawson) made by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
Philadelphia Orchestra/YANNICK NEZET-SEGUIN (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included:
William Levi Dawson: NEGRO FOLK SYMPHONY
Florence Price: SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN D MINOR
With the explosion of works from non-White American composers becoming huge recording and concert favorites with American audiences in the 21st century, one composer stands out in particular. That composer is Florence Beatrice Price, who lived from 1887 to 1953, and who, with her First Symphony, became the first African-American woman composer to get a work of hers performed by an orchestra in her own country (in 1934, with Frederic Stock conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Sadly, because of the despicable Jim Crow laws that existed in the United States, her name and her works were in danger of slipping into total oblivion. Then in 2010, a huge treasure trove of manuscripts of her works was found in a home outside of Chicago; and very soon, those works found their way into the American classical music bloodstream. It was known that Ms. Price had actually written four symphonies; but, due to exigencies beyond anyone’s control, the Second Symphony (said to be in the key of G Minor), seems to have been irrevocably lost to time. However, despite decades of neglect, her Fourth Symphony, composed in 1945, finally got its first recording in 2019, thanks to the efforts of conductor John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra in Arkansas. Like its two existing predecessors, this symphony is full of African-American rhythms, including the pre-ragtime “Juba” dance; and it also contains nominal references to Antonin Dvorak’s Seventh and Ninth symphonies. Price’s Fourth Symphony gained has gained even more prominence in the 2020’s as the result of the Deutsche Grammphon recording (which includes the Negro Folk Symphony of another great African-American composer, William Levi Dawson) made by the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
Philadelphia Orchestra/YANNICK NEZET-SEGUIN (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included:
William Levi Dawson: NEGRO FOLK SYMPHONY