RETURNED TO HER RIGHTFUL PLACE

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine and conductor Jonathon Heyward speak to Harry White about recording Florence Price’s lost-and-found late work, the Second Violin Concerto

You could easily have forgiven Florence Price had she thrown in the towel at the start of the 1930s. The African–American composer was newly divorced and struggling financially in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash. Her prospects were looking bleak. But she was not just an extraordinary musical talent – she was an extraordinary personality. Looking back at her career, and in spite of the self-described ‘handicaps… of sex and race’, she could already cite gravitydefying leaps in the musical world.

Having graduated with honours from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1906, aged only 19, she followed up with an appointment as head of music at what is now known as Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. By 1912, she had married the lawyer Thomas J. Price and moved back to her childhood home in Little Rock, Arkansas, spending the next 15 years raising her children alongside teaching and composing. Then everything changed. Growing racial tensions compelled the family to up sticks and go to Chicago. In less than five years her marriage was over and, a single mother in the midst of an economic depression, she was forced to move in with the family of a friend, Margaret Bonds. But by the late summer of 1933, against all the odds, she had claimed first prize in the elite Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race; her first symphony had been premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and the Chicago Daily News had heralded her genius. Six years later, her music was being performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, to an audience exceeding 75,000 and broadcast to millions across the US.

LISA-MARIE MAZZUCCO

‘THIS IS NOT JUST A REVISION OF THE ORIGINAL ALBUM, IT’S LIKE THE PRICE IS BEING PUT WHERE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN’

Price’s Second Violin Concerto (1952) is a late work and represents a self-assured, distinctive musical voice – albeit one of its final utterances, for within a year she died. We are nevertheless blessed to have this example of Price’s ‘late’ period at all, discovered quite by chance in 2009 by a couple renovating the composer’s former summer home in the village of St Anne, Illinois.

It’s hard to think of a more appropriate champion for the work than Rachel Barton Pine, whose technical brilliance and profound musicianship provide the perfect medium for Price’s music. There is an extramusical dimension here too, as Pine has been working tirelessly for more than two decades to change the face of classical music and its canon, either softly through her own diverse performance repertoire or more directly as founder of the renowned Music by Black Composers project with its repertoire and resource database (part of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation). ‘I’d been of aware of this work for some years,’ says Pine, whose recording of Price’s Second Violin Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Jonathon Heyward is released in September by Cedille Records on the album Violin Concertos by Black Composers through the Centuries. This release marks the 25th anniversary of Pine’s ground-breaking record Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th & 19th Centuries, and features the Price concerto alongside the original 1997 recordings of works by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, José White Lafitte and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

‘It would be accurate to say that I wish I could have included the work on the original album back in 1997, but since it didn’t exist, I couldn’t,’ says Pine. ‘Really, this anniversary record is not just a revision of the original album for today, it’s almost like the Price is being put where it would have been.’

Jonathon Heyward and Rachel Barton Pine at the recording sessions in Glasgow

SALLY JUBB PHOTOGRAPHY

The addition of Price to the album serves as a replacement for a violin concerto by the historically slippery Chevalier de Meude-Monpas, a French composer from the Classical era of whom very little is known even today. His Concerto in D major was an erroneous inclusion on the 1997 album following a misinterpretation of historical sources by contemporary musicologists who mistakenly believed the composer to be of African descent. And Violin Concertos by Black Composers through the Centuries truly benefits from the addition of Price’s music.

Stopping only occasionally to iron out inconsistencies between manuscript and score, Pine, Heyward and the orchestra wrap up the work at a tremendous pace. Snow-covered Glasgow in January may be far removed from the scene of the music’s conception, but the artistic vitality and rich diversity of Chicago in the summer of 1952 is palpable in the purpose-built Scotland’s Studio. Heyward believes that the work offers a precious but all-too-brief glimpse into where Price’s journey might have led: ‘This concerto really is her voice, her identity. In the symphonies you can see where she is going, but now she is formed. You can hear the amazing cultural vibrancy of 1950s Chicago. Listen for her technique for development, the precision of articulation. The saddest part for me is that this is really the last of what we have from Price. It’ll leave you wanting more.’

On this anniversary celebration of Pine’s 1997 album, it’s clear just how much the original release transformed Pine’s life. ‘I have to admit that because I started touring professionally as a teenager, I was very aware of community engagement,’ she reflects. ‘I was also aware of issues concerning economic demographic, because of growing up in a struggling family. But I was not so aware of issues of race and ethnicity within classical music. Living in Chicago, I was really in a bubble where it seemed like diversity in classical music already existed. Little did I know that this was very much an anomaly nationally and internationally. After the record was released, I started hearing in droves from African–American families, parents, students, and also teachers of all ethnicities, saying that they had no idea that black classical composers even existed in the 1700s and 1800s, and asking where they could find more of this music. I knew, having read books like Eileen Southern’s The Music of Black Americans: A History (1971), that it was not possible to understand the music of America without understanding the music of black America. A lot of that book is specifically about classical music. Classical music was a part of black culture. I realised people didn’t have access to this information because it was locked up in academia, and while those academics were doing fabulously within their realm, it was not filtering out to teachers and students. And, as a person of faith rooted in social justice, a research geek, and a musician voracious for all music, I realised life was leading me in this direction, towards my Music by Black Composers project.’

There has been considerable change in the 25 years since the first edition of this record was released. Equity, diversity and inclusion are becoming vital industry expectations and the study and performance of music by black composers has further expanded. Following a half-century hiatus, the music of Price is, once again, becoming recognised for its greatness. And its continued performance by such outstanding musicians as Pine can only serve to further its most deserved exposure.

WORKS PriceViolin Concerto no.2 1

Saint‐Georges Violin Concerto in A major op.5 no.2

White Lafitte Violin Concerto in F sharp minor

Coleridge‐Taylor Romance in G major ARTISTS

Rachel Barton Pine (violin) Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Jonathon Heyward 1 ; Encore Chamber Orchestra/Daniel Hege RECORDING VENUE