Florence Price Piano Quintet in A minor

SUNDIN MUSIC HALL Series || September 18, 2022 @ 3pm
Artaria String Quartet
Ray Shows & Nancy Oliveros, violins
Annalee Wolf, viola Patty Ryan, cello
Guest Pianist - Gloriana Wolf

Florence Price’s music suffered an unwarranted neglect until 2001 when the Women’s Philharmonic created an album of her music. In 2018, G. Schirmer announced that it had acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to her complete catalogue of compositions, and in 2009, a large collection of her works was found in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois. We are fortunate now to hear her Piano Quintet performed by the Artaria String Quartet joined by Gloriana Wolf.
Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas into a mixed-race family and later moved to Atlanta, Georgia where, despite the racial issues of that time, the family was well respected within its community. Her father was the only African American dentist in the city, and her mother was an
important music teacher who gave Florence her earliest training. She published her first composition at the age of eleven. She later attended the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. After several racial incidents, she moved with her family to Chicago where she studied at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teachers College, University of Chicago, and the American Conservatory of Music. In Chicago, she connected with such notables as writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson. In 1933 Price’s E Minor Symphony was performed by the Chicago Symphony, the first piece by an African American woman to be played by a major orchestra. Many awards would follow including a recent one in 2021 when Price was the BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week. Her many works include four symphonies, a piano concerto, two violin concertos, numerous choral and piano works, and some twelve chamber music pieces including the Piano Quintet in A Minor that we hear on this program.
The glorious first movement, Allegro non troppo, offers a strong opening both in terms of classical music and the suggestion of a folk music quality associated with Florence Price. The movement brings particularly sweeping moments for the piano that are also for the other instruments including a wonderful violin solo. The approximately fourteen minutes of this movement make it the longest of the four.
The second movement, Andante con moto, opens mournfully but continues with great warmth by a highly romantic part given to the piano but supported in that spirit by the strings. The con moto (with motion) as suggested in the movement marking brings animation and energy, again with much feeling and a hint of folk music.
The influence of folk music can once again be noted in the joyful and animated third movement Juba. The term “Juba” refers to a dance originating among plantation slaves in the southern US, featuring rhythmic handclapping and slapping of the thighs. One might even hear a bit of ragtime in this movement.
The last movement Scherzo, the briefest of the four, gives us a strong and once again joyful conclusion to this remarkable work by Florence Price, whose music has been compared to Dvořák’s but remains very much her own. ©2022 Lucy Miller Murray