Florence Beatrice Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4
Naxos

When a major orchestra premiered her Symphony No. 1 in E minor at a 1933 concert, Florence Price (1887-1953) became the first African-American woman to have a major American orchestra perform a piece written by her. In a different version of this story, that milestone would have been followed by decades of other performances and recordings, as well as the establishing of Price as a familiar, recurring name on concert set-lists. However, after her death interest in her work waned, overshadowed as it was by a canon largely focused on white male composers, and much of what she created was believed lost. There's been, however, a recent revival of interest: early last year, articles about her appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and the Fort Smith Symphony is currently involved in recording her four symphonies for Naxos, two of which appear on this recent release.

Price was born to a middle-class family in Little Rock, Arkansas and, according to liner notes by musicologist Douglas Shadle, received sound musical instruction from her mother after the city's white teachers refused to teach her. With opportunities for a woman of colour to receive advanced musical training largely unavailable in the South, her mother enrolled Florence in 1903 at the New England Conservatory, where she studied for three years. A move to Chicago in 1927 by the then-married Price led to a flourishing of creative activity, including managing a private piano studio and composing. After her first symphony won a 1932 prize sponsored by the National Association for Negro Musicians (NANM), the work caught the interest of Frederick Stock, who gave the symphony its premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1933.

She wrote at least two other symphonies (the third and fourth); only a few measures of the fourth (the second) survived. Written in 1945, the Symphony No. 4 in D minor was not performed during her lifetime and is only now receiving its world premiere recording on this release by the Fort Smith Symphony and music director John Jeter. Many of the Price works in the University of Arkansas' Special Collections Library were discovered in manuscript form in 2009 at an abandoned house in Kankakee, Illinois, which had been a summer home and composing retreat for Price; among the works found was her handwritten fourth symphony, which was converted by composer and copyist Miho Sasaki into a performing edition for Jeter and the orchestra.

The first and fourth symphonies are similarly structured: each is four movements, with a long allegro opening part followed by three shorter ones (though the slow, lyrical second movement in the first is nearly as long as the opening one). In both works, a jaunty “Juba Dance” appears as the third movement, Shadle clarifying that the “juba,” drawn from Negro vernacular dance, often features syncopated melodies and body percussion (foot stomping, chest patting). Neither work is atonal but instead melodic and rich in folk material, qualities that make both symphonies easily accessible. The influence of Negro spirituals is evident, too, though they're more evoked than quoted directly (apparently, Price became well-known for her arrangements of spirituals, such as the one of “My Soul's Been Anchored in De Lord” Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939).

The dramatic opening movement in the first symphony reveals the influence of Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor (commonly known as the New World Symphony) in its incorporation of folk melodies and a tone that ranges between romantic, plaintive, and majestic. Price's gifts as a composer are well-accounted for in the broad sweep of the movement and the balance achieved between agitated and meditative passages; don't be surprised either if Brahms and Bruckner come to mind at certain moments. The second exudes stately, hymn-like grandeur and alludes to the Negro spiritual in the call-and-response that occurs between the brass instruments and others, while the fourth movement is, consistent with standard symphony form, a lively finale taken at a breezy clip and again rich in folk content.

The opening movement of the fourth is as dramatic as its counterpart in the first, with (as Shadle notes) Price referencing the Negro spiritual “Wade in the Water” in its primary melody. That figure functions as a basis for extensive development in the fifteen-minute movement, whose dramatic presentation is intensified by a prominent use of percussion. It's hard not to think of Dvorák's ninth symphony when the oboe voices the second movement's lyrical folk theme and immediately establishes a mood of pastoral serenity. The work's “Juba Dance” is distinguished by an arresting episode of oboe, strings, and percussion at its center, while the concluding scherzo, much like the first symphony's, caps the work with a breathless five-minute ride.

March 2019