Florence Beatrice Price: Songs of the Oak
Naxos American Classics

This recent collection of overtures, tone poems, and dances by African American composer Florence Price (1887–1953) adds significantly to an appreciation of her singular artistry and imagination. It's but one of many releases issued during the last few years that have deservedly returned the composer's name and works to public attention. All of the elements that distinguish her writing, the richness of its melodies and folk themes, are accounted for on the hour-long release, as solid a representative sampling of Price's music as could be imagined.

Born in Little Rock and educated at Boston's New England Conservatory, Price, a pianist, pedagogue, and organist as well as composer, holds the oft-noted distinction of being the first Black female composer to have a full-length work performed by a major orchestra, in her case the Symphony No. 1 by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1933. Living in Chicago, with its vibrant cultural environment and community, facilitated the development of her composing, which saw elements of spirituals and the African-derived Juba dance find their way into her classical writing. Despite that achievement, her material was performed sporadically in the decades that followed that premiere until the recent resurgence of interest.

Apparently only five of the fifteen orchestral works she wrote were performed in her lifetime, and in nearly every case a single time only. Of the six pieces performed on this new release by the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen (WPR) under John Jeter's direction, four are world premiere recordings. In liner notes, Douglas Shadie writes that while the Concert Overture No. 1 and parts of the Suite of Dances were performed during her lifetime, “the location of the scores for all but two of the pieces on this release (The Oak and Suite of Dances) remained virtually unknown until they were recovered from Price's former summer home near St. Anne, Illinois in 2009.” As a result, Songs of the Oak, Colonial Dance, Concert Overture No. 2, and the full Suite of Dances, appearing seventy years after her death, were recorded for the first time.

The opening Concert Overture No. 1 (1939) and Concert Overture No. 2 (1943) immediately captivate for their spirituals-derived content, the former rooted in “Sinner, Please Don't Let This Harvest Pass” and the episodic latter “Go Down, Moses,”“Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen,” and “Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit.” The former blossoms from a pastoral folk intro into an orchestrally florid, almost cinematic expression of drama and dignity. At nearly twelve minutes, the piece is no fleeting statement but rather a fully developed travelogue and scenic adventure in sound. In that regard, its tone is complementary to the tone painting style presented so splendidly in Songs of the Oak and The Oak. It also serves as a fine illustration of Price's talent for using particular orchestral timbres to produce a painterly portrait. The three spirituals are referenced in turn in the equally picturesque second overture, at three minutes even longer than the first, with the composer deftly transitioning between sombre, tender, and rapturous moods. Both overtures wholly engage for the way they artfully weave melodies from the spirituals into flowing orchestral tapestries.

The recording's high point is Songs of the Oak (1943), a sixteen-minute tone poem of the most evocative sort. As portrayed by Price, the forest setting is one replete with majestic trees and magical creatures. Five minutes in, a storm erupts, its intensity reflected in dizzying wind swirls and a general state of turbulence, but the episode passes, of course, after which peacefulness returns. Passages of contrasting mood and dynamics alternate throughout, all such sections collectively forming a nature portrait resplendent in detail. The darker tone painting, The Oak (1943) might be similarly titled but is noticeably different in tone. An undercurrent of anxiety persists throughout, and at eleven minutes it's also a more compact treatment of the same subject. Unease is offset by moments of pastoral calm, but for the most part The Oak is marked by tragedy to a greater degree than its longer counterpart.

In contrast to the weighty ponderousness of the central works, the closing pair lighten the mood with effervescent dance rhythms. Rousing the spirits, the four-minute Colonial Dance is a boisterous triple-time dynamo highlighted by a middle section featuring pizzicato strings punctuated by bells. Ending the album is perhaps Price's best-known work, the three-part Suite of Dances, whose orchestration of her Three Little Negro Dances for solo piano oozes charm. That the original movement titles were “Hoe Cake,” “Rabbit Foot,” and “Ticklin' Toes” speaks volumes about the joyous flavour of the folksy material.

With their contribution to Naxos's ‘American Classics' series, Jeter and the WPR have gifted us with a fine hour-long sampling of Price's artistry and made a fine addition to a discography that has witnessed dramatic growth over the past couple of years. The varied collection's especially appealing for making room for both the playful innocence of Price's dance pieces and the symphonic sweep of her tone poems and overtures.

February 2023