This recording of two of the four symphonies by Florence Beatrice Price was born from an online digital concert, carried out during the pandemic.
“I have two disabilities. I am a woman and I have colored blood in my veins”
In November 1943, composer Florence Price wrote a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, musical director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, asking him to consider performing her scores: “Unfortunately, the work of a female composer is perceived by many as light, superficial, lacking in depth, logic and virility”she says. “Add to that the racial incident – I have colored blood in my veins – and you will understand some of the difficulties one faces in such a position.” It was his second letter to Koussevitzky, there is no evidence that he ever replied to her. This recording of two of Florence Beatrice Price’s four symphonies was born from an online digital concert, carried out during the pandemic, but the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, promises a complete exploration of the orchestral production of the African-American composer. Such an initiative is most fortunate, because although Price was the first black woman to have one of her works performed by a major symphony orchestra, her music has so far been little recorded.
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This “first” was the Symphony No. 1 in E minorr, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock in 1933. It is reminiscent of Antonin Dvořák, through African-American motifs and other pentatonic tunes. The movements subtitled “Juba”, particularly gleaming, refer to an African-American dance brought to South Carolina by slaves. Although the slow movements reflect the effusive lyricism of a Czech musician, their structure is completely original, in particular that of the Symphony No. 1. Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his musicians captured these changing atmospheres very well, keenly Symphonies n° 2 and 4 !
Jeremiah Bigorie
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