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Price: Songs of the Oak
8.559920 (Naxos Records, CD)
DDD
FIRST RELEASE (25 November 2022)
Playing time: 60'59"
Tracks: 8
Booklet pages: 6
℗ 2022 Naxos Rights (Europe) Ltd
© 2022 Naxos Rights (Europe) Ltd
Main country of recording: Germany
Country of manufacture: Germany
Reviewer: Gerald Fenech
Review of Price: Songs of the Oak published on 14 December 2022
Württrmbergische Philharmonie Reutlingen
John Jeter, conductor
Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953):
1 Concert Overture No 1 (1939)
2 Concert Overture No 2 (1943)
3 Songs of the Oak (1943) (first recording)
4 The Oak (1943)
5 Colonial Dance
Suite of Dances
6 Allegretto
7 Allegretto
8 Allegro molto
The rediscovery of Florence Price's music has revealed one of the most significant bodies of work by an African American composer in the twentieth century. The variety of genres represented on this release place Price's immense artistic imagination on full display. The two Concert Overtures explore her engagement with spirituals, both episodically and coloristically, in music that embraces the sombre, the poignant and the ebullient. Songs of the Oak is a tour de force of Hollywood-influenced storytelling while The Oak offers a more anxious, ultimately tragic portrait. Price's best-known work is the Suite of Dances – originally for piano it is heard here in the composer's full, sumptuous orchestration.
Recorded 20, 21 and 22 April 2022 at the Studio der Württrmbergischen Philharmonie Reutlingen, Germany.