Violin Concertos by Black Composers through the Centuries
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799)
Violin Concerto in A major, Op 5 No 2 (1775)
José White Lafitte (1836-1918)
Violin Concerto in F-sharp minor (1864)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Romance in G major for violin and orchestra, Op 39 (1899)
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Violin Concerto No 2 (1952)
Rachel Barton Pine (violin)
Encore Chamber Orchestra of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Hege
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jonathon Heyward (Price)
rec. 1997, Chapel of St. John the Beloved, Arling Heights, USA; 2022, Scotland’s Studio, Glasgow
CEDILLE CDR90000214 [73]
With the exception of the newly-recorded Concerto by Florence Price, this is a reissue. It was released 25 years ago near the start of Rachel Barton Pine’s career and followed performances a few years earlier of the Concerto No 4 by Le Chevalier de Meude-Monpas, as part of a programme of works by Black composers. The Meude-Monpas was duly recorded and would have been included in this reissue were it not for the fact that in the intervening years it was discovered that Meude-Monpas was not, in fact, black. Thus, Florence Price’s concerto has been substituted, recorded recently in Scotland. Such are the perils of racial attribution.
One of the other things that has happened over the last few years is that Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, has been receiving increasing attention. Renaud Capuçon has just recorded his Op 5 No 1 and Op 8 concertos coupling them, somewhat improbably you’d have thought, with Vivaldi’s you-know-what. Zefira Valova meanwhile prefers to contextualise the Op 4 concerto with works by Benda and Graun, whilst on Naxos Qian Zhou presents an all-Bologne programme. If Pine was in some way responsible for this greater examination, then all credit to her.
His Concerto in A major, Op 5/2 is written for strings, with no winds, at the same time as Mozart’s Violin Concertos. The demands for figuration and for high positions are notable, and Pine responds with highly effective playing, silvery and expressive. The pliant and attractive slow movement is thematically admirable - ingratiating and lyric – whilst the finale is somewhat Old School for 1775 but none the less entertaining.
José White Lafitte, better known as plain José White, was a famous virtuoso whose Concerto in F sharp minor has never been entirely eclipsed. In fact, Aaron Rosand played it in 1974 and recorded it the following year with Paul Freeman and the LSO (it’s downloadable, as well as being in the Black Composers Series 1974-78, a 10-CD box from Sony). It’s finely orchestrated, the soloist entering with dextrous double-stops - at which White must have been expert as he persistently writes them into the score. Much of the writing combines sub-Ernst virtuosity with Mendelssohnian lyricism and the result is extremely engaging, notably the folkloric flightiness of finale.
We don’t need to introduce Coleridge-Taylor whose Romance in G major offers a slow introduction to ensuing drama that contains eloquent limpid oases of beauty and a commanding conclusion. At 12:30 in this performance, however, it’s far too slow, though, and makes less of an impression than it should.
Pine plays splendidly throughout and is accompanied by the Encore Chamber Orchestra of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Hege. They do the best they can and one can’t be too critical – though this disc is being offered at full price, I believe – but the orchestral support they offer is blowsy and not up to scratch.
This is graphically shown by the Price pocket concerto (15 minutes long) performed in January 2022 by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Jonathon Heyward. The recording quality is infinitely better too. There’s a lot of talk in the booklet about Price’s modernism and hymnal writing, seemingly straining desperately to co-opt it to the Spiritual but I’d ignore all that. Clearly the booklet and indeed this whole disc has a project to offer. What Price writes is much more engaging, a predominantly light-hearted piece, full of brio and moments – such as the cadenza – of more obviously virtuosic writing. She writes diaphanously, allows the winds their moment, and turns in some jaunty motifs and ripe romanticism. I’d agree with the notes that this is a ‘showpiece of thematic economy… and expressive drama’ but whether it’s a concerto as such, I rather doubt.
I’m not really sure where this leaves us. I don’t believe there’s a competing version of the Bologne but there is of the White. There at least two currently available versions of the Coleridge-Taylor and both are superior to this one. The Price is valuable, but both her concertos are available via an Albany MP3 and indeed Barton Pine’s own performance seems to be available too, separately, on MP3.
Jonathan Woolf
Published: October 31, 2022
