Volume 27 Issue 3 - December 2021 / January 2022

Florence Price
(1887-1953), a
native of Little Rock,
Arkansas and a
graduate of Boston’s
New England
Conservatory of
Music, was a pianist
and composer who,
despite enjoying a modicum of recognition
during her lifetime (including having her
Symphony No. 1 in E Minor premiered in
1933 by Frederick Stock and the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, a first for an African-
American woman) was a composer whose
work was almost lost to history. As the
charming illustrated children’s book Who is
Florence Price?, written by students of the
Special Music School at New York’s Kaufman
Music Center recounts, a box of Price’s
dogeared and yellowed manuscripts of
original compositions and symphonic works
was found (and thankfully not discarded) in
2009 in a dilapidated attic of the Chicago-area
summer home in St. Anne, Illinois in which
Price wrote. This discovery has led to what
could be described as a Price renaissance,
with multiple recordings, premieres, the
dissemination power of the Schirmer
publishing house (that acquired worldwide
rights to Price’s catalogue in 2018), and, most
recently, two excellent discs that capture the
American composer’s elegant music in its
full glory.
Rooted in the
European Romantic
compositional
tradition that was
her training, but
blended with the
sounds of American
urbanization, the
African-American
church, as well as
being imbued with
elements of a folkloric
vernacular
blues style, Price’s Symphonies 1 & 3 (on
Deutsche Grammophon) and the never before
recorded Ethiopia’s Shadow in America
(Naxos American Classics) come to life with
tremendous splendor and historical gravitas
in the capable hands of Yannick Nézet-
Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra and
the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
respectively.
Of note is Price’s under-recorded The
Mississippi River, that ORF conductor
John Jeter suggests captures “the depth of
the American experience… like no other
composer.” Articulating in sound the experience
of the Great Migration, the large-scale
movement and relocation of African-
Americans from the Southern United States to
such Northern locales of employment, urbanization
and distance from “Jim Crow” laws as
Chicago, Detroit and New York, that was both
compositional fodder for Price and her own
lived experience.
The book and two discs represent tremendous
strides towards greater inclusion and
representation within the canon and, at least
for this reviewer, facilitated the discovery of a
creative and exceptional new musical voice.
Andrew Scott
Americascapes
Basque National Orchestra; Robert Trevino
Ondine ODE 1396-2 (naxosdirect.com/
search/ode+1396-2+)
! Alsace-born
Charles Martin
Loeffler (1861-1935)
moved to the U.S. in
1881. His 25-minute
“Poème dramatique,”
La Mort de
Tintagiles, Op.6
(1897), based on a
play for marionettes by Maurice Maeterlinck
about a murderous queen, is definitely
“dramatique.” Between its stormy opening
and mournful close, Loeffler’s lushly scored,
ravishing music conjures a scenario of
sensuous longing and dangerous conflict,
with long-lined, arching melodies and
vibrant orchestral colours redolent of French
late-Romanticism-Impressionism. I loved it;
why isn’t it better known?
Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) depicted his
wife and three friends, including Charles
Ives, in his four-movement, ten-minute
Evocations (1943), orchestrated from earlier
piano pieces. Hardly affectionate music, it’s
austere and perturbed. To me, Ruggles’ very
name embodies what I hear in all his music,
including Evocations – rugged struggles.
The cinematically rhapsodic Before
the Dawn, Op.17 (1920), anticipates the
many beauties that would be heard in the
symphonies of Howard Hanson (1896-1981),
his first appearing just two years later. The
brief (under seven minutes) tone poem here
receives its long overdue, first-ever recording.
Henry Cowell (1897-1965) spent the winter
of 1956-1957 in Iran, part of a tour jointly
subsidized by agencies of the U.S. and Iranian
governments. Three works resulted: Persian
Set, Homage to Iran and the 19-minute
Variations for Orchestra (1956) recorded here.
It’s filled with exotic sonorities hinting at
arcane magic and nocturnal mysteries.
Thanks to conductor Robert Trevino and
the Basque National Orchestra for these revelatory
performances of four almost-forgotten
American works.
Michael Schulman
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY
New Jewish Music Vol.3
Sharon Azrieli; Krisztina Szabó; Nouvel
Ensemble Moderne; Lorraine Vaillancourt
Analekta AN 2 9263 (analekta.com/en)
! The Azrieli
Foundation has
released their
recording of this
year’s composition
prize for new
Jewish music,
along with recordings
of commissioned
works in the categories of Canadian
Composition and Jewish Music: Yotam
Haber’s Estro Poetico-armonico III in the
latter, Keiko Devaux’s instrumental work
Arras in the Canadian category. Yitzhak
Yedid’s Kadosh Kadosh and Cursed won
the prize for an existing work of Jewish
Music. Dissidence, a concise and somewhat
anachronistic work for small orchestra
and soprano (Sharon Azrieli, a fine soprano
and founder of the prize) by the late Pierre
Mercure, rounds out the disc.
Kadosh… is concerned with Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount, the place shared as sacred by
three major religions. Embattled chattering
and shouts introduce Yedid’s work, followed
by brassy bombast and unison modal melody
in alternation, depicting conflict, even
violence. A middle section provides relief,
insofar as mourning relieves cataclysm.
The individual players of Montreal’s excellent
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne get a brief
chance to sing before hostilities recommence,
devolve into a nasty Hora, returning tragically
to increasing strife. By the end of the movement,
we’re hoping, nay praying for peace.
Hope deferred, the heart is sick. A chant
melody in the piano calls through maddened
violin scratches and braying brass. Yedid
seems pessimistic; in spite (or because) of the
spiritual importance of the Temple Mount,
hostilities persist.
The formidable mezzo Kristina Szabó joins
the ensemble for Haber’s work, a complex
piece with so much historical/textual weight
it deserves a review unto itself. Highly
effective writing.
Arras is a woven tableau, relying on
breath and bow effects, microtonal vibrato
and dissonances, and shifting background
textures to frame lush, even lurid melody. A
single movement of nearly 25 minutes’ length,
it makes a patient argument for beauty.
Max Christie
thewholenote.com December 2021 and January 2022 | 41