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Sunday, December 22, 2019

Florence Price - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 (John Jeter)


Information

Composer: Florence Price
  • (01) Symphony No. 1 in E minor
  • (05) Symphony No. 4 in D minor

Fort Smith Symphony
John Jeter, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559827

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Review

In addition to the harvest of death, disenfranchisement, pain and suffering inflicted by societies locked into institutionalised racism, there is also the incalculable loss of unrealised potential. Combine pervasive racism with centuries of undervaluing the contributions of women and the odds against success become all but overwhelming. This new Naxos release of the First and Fourth Symphonies by Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) is part of the rediscovery now under way of an African American woman who defied those odds.

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Price’s musical education began early with her piano teacher mother. At 14 she was admitted to New England Conservatory, where she studied with George Whitefield Chadwick. In 1910 she was named head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University. Even after she and her husband moved to Chicago with their two daughters in the late 1920s, Price continued to study, notably with Leo Sowerby and Roy Harris.

Price’s First Symphony was composed in 1932 for a contest sponsored by the Wanamaker Foundation and performed by the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock the following year. Her Fourth Symphony, composed in 1945 and recorded here for the first time, was discovered in 2009 among a sheaf of manuscripts in her former summer home on the outskirts of Chicago.

Both works exhibit a thorough familiarity with late 19th-century symphonic practice but with contemporary harmony, vibrant rhythmicality and melodic invention all their own. Presumably in all Price’s symphonies (the Second is apparently lost), a juba dance replaces the scherzo as the third movement. With the exception of an allusion to the spiritual ‘Wade in the water’ in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, Price does not quote folk music but evokes it through characteristic melodic and rhythmic gestures. Her handling of the orchestra is idiomatic and strikingly original, with solos generously allocated throughout the ensemble. Each symphony describes a grand emotional trajectory, over the course of four movements, from deep seriousness to redemptive joy.

The introduction or, more appropriately, restoration of Price’s unique voice is unquestionably an enrichment of the American symphonic canon.

-- Patrick Rucker, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 8 / SOUND QUALITY: 7
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Mar/Price_sys_8559827.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Apr/Price_sys_8559827.htm
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/florence-price-symphonies-nos-1-4-fort-smith-symphony-john-jeter/
https://www.allmusic.com/album/florence-beatrice-price-symphonies-no-1-in-e-minor-no-4-in-d-minor-mw0003236261
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.559827&languageid=EN
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Symphonies-Nos-1-4/dp/B07KM16SDP

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Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith; April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953) was an American classical composer, pianist, organist, music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price wrote many extended works for orchestra, chamber works, art songs, works for violin, organ anthems, piano pieces, spiritual arrangements, four symphonies, three piano concertos, and a violin concerto. Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Price

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American conductor John Jeter received his formal education at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music and Butler University’s Jordan College of Fine Arts. Jeter has been the music director and conductor of the Fort Smith Symphony since 1997 and is the recipient of the Mayor’s Achievement Award for his services to the City of Fort Smith. Jeter has also guest conducted numerous orchestras in Indiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Illinois. He has co-hosted numerous radio programs and is involved in many radio and television projects concerning classical music.

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  4. muchas gracias, ronal do. hermosa musica

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