Information
Composer: Florence Price; Valerie Coleman; Jessie Montgomery
- Price - Ethiopia's Shadow in America
- Coleman - Umoja: Anthem of Unity
- Price - Piano Concerto in One Movement
- Montgomery - Soul Force
Michelle Cann, piano
New York Youth Symphony
Michael Repper, conductor
Date: 2022
Label: Avie Records
-----------------------------------------------------------
Florence Price is fast becoming the flag-bearer for a whole new generation of female African American composers. And she is also a wonderful example of how quality will out if champions such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin (his terrific recording of her First and Third Symphonies took us all unawares – DG, 11/21) are on hand to break the chain of neglect and obscurity.
This particular album is yet another example of a project in a sense fortified by the Covid pandemic, and the fact that it features a youth orchestra – New York Youth Symphony – is a heartening indication of innocent ears opening to both the undiscovered and the entirely new. They give it their all. Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (recorded for the first time by an American ensemble) is a fitting foundation for the programme, its focus not so much on the indefensible reality and inhumanity of slavery as the enduring spirit to rise above it. For sure, its first pages are marked with a cry of anguish across the entire orchestra – but a nobility of utterance shines through them and it isn’t long before the emergence of a simple Spiritual (in the second section of the piece) finds solace in a solo cello and aspiration in its journey from solo oboe to balmy (and majestic) horns. And don’t for a moment think that a cakewalk is a somehow inappropriate conclusion to what has gone before, because this is the music that Price knew and found joy in. It was something to be celebrated.
Turning to the other Price opus featured here, the Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934), it is once again striking that the Europeanisms are set against tunes with a distinct flavour or ‘ache’, you might call it. She celebrated and ennobled music of the African diaspora; the simple and homespun grow mighty in her music. Again we have a slow movement where the tune (or ‘Spiritual’) is very much the thing. And where there is singing, there is dancing. The finale is pure ragtime and these young players, under Michael Repper’s enthusiastic direction, seem instinctively to feel its origins: earthy and a tad awkward. The piece all but belongs to pianist Michelle Cann, who gave its New York and Philadelphia premieres.
The other two composers, Valerie Coleman and Jessie Montgomery, speak a musical language more in tune with the ‘currency’ of their performers. Indeed, Montgomery is an NYYS alumna. Her Soul Force (2015) is very now. Soul and hip hop are there – in the subtext if not in the foreground (bodily rhythms are writ large in the percussion) – and a more assertive big-band jazz, which drives its mounting affirmation, has the ring of Ellington’s Harlem about it. The inspiration comes from Martin Luther King, who spoke of ‘meeting physical force with soul force’. Just so.
Coleman’s Umoja takes the Swahili word for ‘unity’ and makes a kind of tribal unity of it. The piece is born of a simple song for women’s chorus – Appalachian in style and inflection – and in its orchestral incarnation the song becomes songful. As with Montgomery’s piece, it grows in fervour with the acquisition of colour and rhythm until a communal joyousness is communicated. The means may have been different but the path to affirmation is really not so far removed from what Florence Price was doing nearly a century before.
-- Edward Seckerson, Gramophone
-----------------------------------------------------------
Florence Price (April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953) was an American classical composer. She was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death. 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. She composed over 300 works, including four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. Price received praise for the blending of western education and African American culture in her music.
***
Valerie Coleman (born 3 September 1970) is an American composer and flutist.
***
Jessie Montgomery (born 8 December 1981) is an American composer who is a former member of the Catalyst Quartet.
***
Michael Repper (born 25 September 1990) is a orchestral conductor, the youngest American to win the Grammy Award.
-----------------------------------------------------------
FLAC, tracks
Links in comment
Enjoy!
Choose one link, copy and paste it to your browser's address bar, wait a few seconds (you may need to click 'Continue' first), then click 'Free Access with Ads' / 'Get link'. Complete the steps / captchas if require.
ReplyDeleteGuide for Linkvertise: 'Free Access with Ads' --> 'Get [Album name]' --> 'I'm interested' --> 'Explore Website / Learn more' --> close the newly open tab/window, then wait for a few seconds --> 'Get [Album name]'
https://link-center.net/610926/price-coleman-montgomery
or
https://uii.io/ixdyWf0j
or
https://exe.io/VAAxA