Symphony No. 1 in E Minor
Florence Price

African American composer, organist, pianist and educator Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 9, 1887, and died in Chicago on June 3, 1953. Her mother was her first teacher, and she later went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. After teaching for a while in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, and Atlanta, she moved to Chicago. Active as a composer and performer in the worlds of symphonic and commercial music, Price is also renowned for her choral and solo vocal compositions. Her settings of spirituals were performed by some of the 20th century’s greatest singers, including Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. She was also the first African American woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major American orchestra, when Frederick Stock led the premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1933. The work was composed in 1931. Much of Price’s music remained unpublished until after her death, but, since 1918, the firm of G. Schirmer acquired the rights to her works and more recent scholarship has led to ever more frequent performances of her music. Her Symphony No. 1 is scored for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (including large and small African drums and cathedral bells), wind whistle and strings.

Antonín Dvořák, while in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, admonished American composers to look for the essence of Native American and African American music. This advice began to bear fruit in the 1930s, as three prominent Black composers – William Grant Still, William Dawson, and Florence Price – rose to prominence. These composers are often linked to the Great Migration, a period in which Southern-born African American artists moved to the North. This was the period in which Langston Hughes, W.E.B Du Bois and many others rose to prominence. A parallel phenomenon in New York City was the Harlem Renaissance. The fact that Price, a Black woman, achieved as much as she did in the face of many challenges, is all the more impressive. Born in the American South, Price sought to escape racism by moving from Little Rock and Atlanta to the friendlier climes of Chicago. Her extraordinary contribution to the classical repertory reflects, in her own soulful manner, the powerful late-romantic style of Dvořák’s music, as exhibited in the Czech master’s popular Symphony in E Minor (“From the New World”) mixed with the authentic voice of African American culture — a beautiful example of cross-pollination. Price’s entrance into the world of symphonic musical composition came relatively late in her career. As she wrote in a letter to a friend: “I found it possible to snatch a few precious days in the month of January (1931) in which to write undisturbed. But, oh dear me, when shall I ever be so fortunate again as to break a foot!” The Symphony No. 1 earned her the Rodman Wanamaker Prize in 1932, which brought her to the attention of the conductor, Frederick Stock, who led the work’s premiere on June 15, 1933.

The influence of Dvořák, as well as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is felt most keenly in the outer movements of Price’s Symphony No. 1. Its home key of E minor is a further nod to Dvořák, whose final symphony (“From the New World”) is also in that key signature of one sharp. The first movement wastes no time in establishing a memorable tune that exhibits her gift of melodic invention, a talent that reveals itself throughout the entire work. The first movement is cast in the traditional sonata form, with repeated exposition, a development section and recapitulation. An interesting feature of the development section is its self-conscious avoidance of dramatic tension in favor of colorful orchestration and harmonic and tonal exploration.

The second movement, “Largo,” is the spiritual heart of the symphony. Its principal theme is a beautifully orchestrated chorale tune scored for a brass choir of horns, trumpets, trombones, and tuba, punctuated gently by timpani and large African drum. Later in the movement, Price introduces church bells, with the chorale tune ornamented by rapid triplets in the clarinet. The use of these percussion instruments is a further illustration of the blending of cultures. The third movement is titled “Juba Dance.” Juba, in addition to being the name of the capital of South Sudan, was a lively dance popular with slaves in Southern antebellum plantations. Its choreography involves slapping parts of the body to imitate the sounds of a drum. This gave rise to the tradition called “Patting Juba.” This movement, which includes a brief appearance of the wind whistle, clearly puts the African American experience in the foreground.

Price’s Symphony No. 1 ends with a relatively short “Presto,” a whirlwind of a movement that evokes the finale of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony.

Suite from ‘The Firebird’ (1919 version)
Igor Stravinsky 

One of the towering figures of 20th-century music, Igor Stravinsky, was born in Oranienbaum, Russia, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York City on April 6, 1971. While his best known works remain the three ballet scores based on Russian themes and scenarios — The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring — composed for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the early 1910s, Stravinsky wrote works that encompass many genres and explore a wide variety of musical styles, all of which bear his own distinctive traits. The Firebird ballet was first performed on June 25, 1910, at the Paris Opéra with G. Pierné conducting. The 1919 suite, a slightly revised and reduced version of the 1910 suite was first performed in Geneva on April 12, 1919, with Ernst Ansermet conducting. The suite is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp and strings.

“He who hesitates is lost,” goes the old saying. The composer Anatol Liadov, who was supposed to have composed the music for a new ballet based on the legend of the Firebird that Sergei Diaghilev planned to produce in his second Paris season, ought to have paid attention to the adage’s warning. Fortunately for the young Igor Stravinsky, Liadov did not, and the great opportunity for which Stravinsky had been hoping was now at hand. Diaghilev had already been sufficiently impressed with the talent of the precocious student of Rimsky-Korsakov to commission orchestrations of two piano pieces by Chopin from him in 1909. But a chance to collaborate as a full partner with the likes of choreographer-dancer Mikhail Fokine was almost too good to be true. The success of Stravinsky’s score to The Firebird, first performed at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910, under the baton of Gabriel Pierné, was legendary. This ballet remains to this day the most popular of all Stravinsky’s scores. Over the next two years (1911 and 1913) Stravinsky was to follow the success of The Firebird with Petruchka and the epic Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).

The story of The Firebird revolves around three primary figures – Prince Ivan, the monster Kastchei, and the magical Firebird herself. Near the beginning of the ballet, the prince captures the fabulous beast, but she persuades him to release her by offering him one of her feathers, which he may use to summon her whenever he finds himself in peril. That moment comes when Ivan is captured by the evil Kastchei and his minions. The prince waves the Firebird’s plume, and she appears as promised. She leads Kastchei and his defenders in a wild dance, which itself is followed by their own sinister Infernal Dance, after which they fall exhausted and are lulled into a magical sleep by the Firebird. The Firebird shows Ivan a huge egg containing Kastchei’s evil soul. The Prince smashes the egg, killing Kastchei and destroying the monster’s kingdom. Thirteen princesses who had been imprisoned by Kastchei are released from their bondage and the last of these becomes Ivan’s bride.

Stravinsky excerpted three suites from The Firebird in 1911, 1919, and 1949 respectively. The earliest of these calls for the largest orchestra, identical to the scoring of the complete ballet. The more frequently performed Second Suite (heard on this program) is written for a smaller orchestra, but retains many of the spectacular effects (glissando harmonics, for example) of the earlier suite, even adding a few new ones, such as the glissandos for trombone and horn. Its succession of movements is as follows:

I and II. “Introduction; The Firebird and Her Dance; Variation of the Firebird.” A slow and brooding legato figure in the lower strings is punctuated with colorfully jagged woodwinds. A faster tempo introduces the fabulous firebird in passagework that taxes the skill of all the woodwinds.

III. “The Princesses’ Round: Khorovod.” A lush movement in B major is inaugurated by the flutes and continued by a beautiful melody in the oboe, accompanied by the harp. Other gentle tunes are presented in the winds and strings and the movement comes to a shimmering conclusion couched in the softest possible dynamic.

IV. “Infernal Dance of King Kastchei.” The calm of the previous movement is shattered by the full orchestra as Kastchei and his followers revel in syncopated rhythms. The Infernal Dance unfolds as one of the most exciting tours de force in all orchestral music, leading without pause into the fourth movement. Much of its harmonic exoticism comes from Stravinksy’s bold use of an augmented triad.

V. “Berceuse and Finale.” The evocative timbre of the high bassoon sings the Firebird’s lullaby. A magical passage of chromatic harmonies leads to a noble melody in the solo horn, marking the onset of the finale. This tune — a variant of one heard in the second movement — is repeated, growing louder with each statement. A sudden pulling back of dynamics in the tremolo violins ushers in a brilliant, faster version of the tune that yields finally to a grandiose broadening of tempo and pompous closure for the full orchestra, led by the triumphant brass.

- David B. Levy