Florence Price (1887-1953)
Scenes in Tin Can Alley
Scenes in Tin Can Alley (1928)
Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman (1938 – 1942)
Clouds (circa 1940s)
Village Scenes (1942)
Preludes (1926-1932)
Cotton Dance (circa 1940s)
Three Miniature Portraits of Uncle Ned (1932 – 1941)
Josh Tatsuo Cullen (piano)
rec. 2022, The Ballroom Studio, Lansing, USA
Reviewed as downloaded from press preview
BLUE GRIFFIN BGR615 [51]
The African-American composer Florence Price was truly prolific with more than 300 works to her credit, including 4 symphonies, 4 concertos, chamber music compositions, vocal music and piano works. She was also the first African-American woman to be recognised as symphonist and the first to have a symphony played by a major symphony orchestra. This was in 1933 when her first symphony was included in a programme titled “The Negro in Music” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After her death in 1953, interest in her music waned, but in recent times there has been a revival for her works – Presto Classical lists 73 entries in June 2022 – and interest seems to continue. In 2009 a lot of manuscripts were found in her deserted summer house, and several of them are included in the present disc.
Having studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, she was steeped in the European tradition, but she also assimilated impressions from American traditions. Ragtime, spirituals, boogie woogie rub shoulders seamlessly with European Romanticism and Impressionism and creates a personal conglomerate that is very agreeable. Most of the music on this disc is programmatic, with descriptive titles. The timespan is from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s.
Scene in Tin Can Alley opens with The Huckster, where the influence from ragtime is very distinct. For the second movement, Children at Play, Florence Price has delivered a programme: “Children at
play pause to stare at an old, crippled woman who passes along searching in garbage cans for food. The pitiful figure disappears, is soon forgotten and the children quickly resume their play.” That the children play is easy to conclude, and the scene with the old woman is contemplative and melancholy. The third movement, Night, which is the longest individual piece in the whole recital, also has a programme: “The scene is sordid. There comes a slinking figure. Occasionally there is a swift movement – something scurrying to its shelter. From within a squalid tenement comes the plaintive wail of a child, also the complaint of an older member of the family.” To me it sounds like a bar pianist improvising late at night with the guests snoozing in their chairs. The pianist builds up a crescendo and the guests wake up, but he quickly turns down the volume and the guests continue snoozing.
The four Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman are real miniatures, as are most of the other pieces, and it seems that the washerwoman’s lot is not very uplifting: three of them are rather melancholy and gloomy; only the third, A Gay Moment, reveals something else – and it lasts for only 37 seconds! But on the other hand, it is a ragtime, so during those 37 seconds she is really happy.
The independent Clouds, one of the longest pieces, adduces influences from, say, Schumann, but also Impressionism, and the first of the three Village Scenes – Church Spires in Moonlight – could be inspired by Debussy’s La cathedrale engloutie – somewhat gloomy and mysterious. A Shaded Lane is a little livelier and The Park bounds for life, it’s really jolly.
Most of Florence Price’s piano pieces have got descriptive titles, but the Preludes are just numbered, absolute music – and none the worse for that. On the contrary, this set of five preludes may be the essence of Florence Price. The opening Allegro moderato is lively and inviting; the following Andantino cantabile in ternary form, is truly beautiful with an up-tempo mid-section. The Allegro molto has a taste of cabaret music, played no doubt with a twinkle in the eye. No. 4, marked Wistful. Allegretto con tenerezza is in ¾-time and there is a becoming streak of melancholy, before the whole thing is rounded of with a plain Allegro. The whole thing is over in ten minutes, but it feels like having listened to a whole novel.
Cotton Dance is based on the boogie woogie rhythm, but the harmonic language is complex, and the piece requires a virtuoso pianist. There is tremendous vitality here.
The Three Miniature Portraits of Uncle Ned, don’t portray a specific Uncle Ned, but “the stock character of ‘Old Uncle Ned’ or ‘Uncle Joe’ from the American minstrel tradition.” And miniatures they are. In 4 minutes and 10 seconds we follow his whole life: At Age 17 he is youthful, playful and still a little childish, At Age 27 he has grown up and wants to prove his matureness through being pompous. At Age 70 night is drawing near: he is heavy and slow.
Looking back to what I have written, it may seem that a lot of the music is gloomy and filled with sorrows – but the overriding impression is that life is filled with energy and positive feelings – but against a backdrop of melancholy. I played the disc through from beginning to end when I got it as background while doing something quite else, and it was an energising experience. When I returned to it for close listening, I became aware of the backdrop, but still it was a life-enhancing feeling that dominated. So, my advice to readers is: approach the disc unprejudiced and I’m sure you will get as positive vibrations as I got. Josh Tatsuo Cullen, who also wrote the liner notes, has devoted much time to penetrate into Florence Price’s music, and he is a reliable advocate for her piano oeuvre.
Göran Forsling
