These readings of symphonies by African-American composer Florence Beatrice Price originated as a pandemic-time online digital concert, but Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin promises a full exploration of Price's orchestral output. Such a thing is certainly welcome, for although Price was the first Black woman to have a work performed by a major symphony orchestra, her music has been only sparsely recorded. That "first" was the Symphony No. 1 in E minor heard here, played by the Chicago Symphony under ...
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These readings of symphonies by African-American composer Florence Beatrice Price originated as a pandemic-time online digital concert, but Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin promises a full exploration of Price's orchestral output. Such a thing is certainly welcome, for although Price was the first Black woman to have a work performed by a major symphony orchestra, her music has been only sparsely recorded. That "first" was the Symphony No. 1 in E minor heard here, played by the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock in 1933, and it is all the more remarkable in that it was Price's first orchestral work of any kind. Her model is Dvorák, with African-American materials sprinkled through the music beyond simply Dvorák's basic pentatonic tunes. These vary in their level of success; the "Juba" movements in each symphony render Black music through a white filter, and Nézet-Séguin can't do much with them. The slow movements, however, are something else again. They have Dvorák's lyrical...
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