Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Interest in the music of Florence Price (1887–1953) has grown considerably in the last few years, with her music becoming a regular feature in concert halls and recording studios, and her piano music firmly reestablishing its place in music education.
Price’s music has appeared in several piano compilations that I have reviewed here, including my own Joy of Graded Piano Grade 4 book, and a couple of years ago the Hal Leonard publication Florence Price: Rediscovered Gems for intermediate pianists was widely heralded as a publishing success.
In the Pianodao review of that book, I concluded:
“These are pieces of substance and quality that will universally delight, motivate, inspire, and win over players and audiences everywhere. They are indeed rediscovered gems!”
Florence Price: Rediscovered Gems was the work of editor and Price expert Michael Clark, who has subsequently compiled a new anthology for late intermediate to early advanced pianists, with a nucleus of repertoire that, in my estimation, would suit players around UK Grade 6-7 level, and simply called Price Piano Works. This new collection is published by Edition Peters.
Also newly available, author, pianist and music historian Dr. Samantha Ege has delivered a stunning new edition, published by OUP Music, of Price’s celebrated Fantasie Nègre: Four Fantasies for Piano.
This is arguably among the most important scholarly critical performing editions I have ever been sent for review, offering as it does four milestone concert pieces, presented in complete editions for the first time, that will suit diploma recitalists and professional pianists.
In this review, I will consider each of these two new publications in turn…
Price Piano Works
While Michael Clark’s Hal Leonard volume had an eye-catching design that might appeal to piano learners and amateur enthusiasts, his new Edition Peters volume has a rather more serious and scholarly tone, appearing in the publisher’s revered Urtext ‘green edition’ format, with a surprisingly stiff spine, the 112 pages within beautifully presented on high quality cream paper.
Introducing the music in this collection, Clark tells us,
“As Price explained in her letter to Koussevitzky, her music draws upon both African American and European influences. This volume features Price’s solo piano works inspired by the late-19th century Romantic tradition. The genres she adopts invoke composers such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt, whose music was central to her conservatory training.”
The contents are as follows:
- Prelude No. 1
- Prelude No. 2
- Prelude No. 3
- Prelude No. 4
- Prelude No. 5
- Etude in A minor
- Impromptu in A major
- Scherzo in G major
- Tarantella in D minor
- Tarantelle in G minor
- Barcarolle in A major
- Song Without Words in G major
- Song Without Words in A major
- Valsette Mignon
- Rowing: Little Concert Waltz
- Waltz of the Spring Maid
- Rainbow Waltz
- Waltz Charming
- Cherry Blossoms in Her Hair
- Waltz in F major
- Tempo di valse in D major
- In Sentimental Mood
- Whirlaway Waltz
- Waltzing on a Sunbeam
- To a Little Girl (to Vicki)
- Cradle Piece in A major
- Three Roses: To a Yellow Rose
- Three Roses: To a White Rose
- Three Roses: To a Red Rose
- To a White Rose (alternate version)
In his superbly written Preface, Clark explains that,
“Price’s interest in these Romantic genres is concentrated in the late 1920s and early 1930s, at the beginning of her professional composition career. She largely set these genres aside by the mid-1930s, as her attention turned increasingly toward large-scale orchestral works and compositions more explicitly grounded in African American musical idioms.”
Some of these works may initially sound less immediately distinctive than Price’s more overtly African American-inflected music, but that should not be mistaken for a lack of personality or craft. These are consistently distinctive and appealing pieces, my particular favourites including the Barcarolle in A major, Rowing: Little Concert Waltz , Cherry Blossoms in Her Hair, and the Three Roses. But this is a rewarding volume that truly includes a cornucopia of musical delights.
In general, the pieces bridge the terrain between the Romantic repertoire and the salon music of the “Golden Age”. They show broad influence, and Clark particularly references Price’s indebtedness to Mendelssohn, her near-quotation from Chopin’s third Ballade in one of her Preludes, and reference to Duke Ellington in her In a Sentimental Mood. I would add that her To a Red Rose subtly alludes to MacDowell’s evergreen To a Wild Rose.
The edition itself is superb too, with outstanding engraving, editorial fingering where helpful, and a nine-page Critical Commentary at the rear. The publication comfortably lives up to the high standards of Edition Peters.
Price Piano Works is sure to bring enormous delight to players, and will no doubt also yield many recital and exam selections for years to come. I very highly recommend it as an addition to your music library.
Fantasie Nègre
If the pieces in Price Piano Works are set to become a feature in educational and amateur playing, let’s hope that her Four Fantasies for Piano similarly sets the recital scene alight. Composed between 1929 and 1933, these virtuosic works are actually contemporaneous with many of the lighter works in Michael Clark’s volume, but are of a very different order.
As Dr. Samantha Ege writes in the Preface to her new OUP Music edition they,
“…remain unique contributions to classical keyboard literature. They sit alongside Price’s award-winning Sonata in E minor as the most technically demanding of her piano solo works. Like the sonata, the Fantasies are a blend of sound-worlds, entwining Black folk idioms with Chopinesque filigrees, and Brahmsian warmth with sorrow song solemnity. Still, it is Price’s voice that shines through above all, a voice that is at once lyrical, searching, mediative, and resolute.”
The best-known of the Fantasies (until now) is the first, in the key of E minor, which has been available in the publication Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music (Hildegard Publishing Company). The UK exam boards have variously included it in their syllabus repertoire at notably different diploma levels, including ALCM, LTCL, and FRSM.
Samantha Ege’s new edition of this piece differs from the text that players have previously been used to (including that cited by exam boards), because in her efforts to deliver a more definitive account she made a decision to foreground Price’s original, unrevised manuscripts, including material from sources that had long been neglected and were only rediscovered in 2009.
These manuscripts also enabled Ege to revisit and significantly revise the Fantasie Nègre No.4 in B minor, and reconstruct the incomplete, previously presumed lost Fantasie Nègre No.3 in F minor, which proves to be an immensely appealing piece.
Ege made the critically acclaimed first complete recording of all four Fantasies in 2021, and it is now available to stream on all major platforms. But for now, enjoy her performance of the brilliant Fantasie Nègre No.4:
Ege’s considerable scholarship is rightly placed front and centre stage in the impressive, unprecedented OUP Music score. The book’s Preface: Note by Note introduction is followed by an in-depth assessment of the many Sources and Contexts of the music, a short article about Editorial Practice, an eight-page critical commentary, and a further three-page essay About the Pieces.
The scores themselves occupy the remaining 48 pages of the 72-page book. They are spaciously presented, and include Ege’s editorial fingering and pedalling suggestions in addition to Price’s. The superb engraving is in Oxford University Press’s house style, the book has a vivid cover (see above), and the whole affair is printed on high-quality off-white paper.
Having noted that Price herself considered these pieces to be among her own finest works, Ege concludes,
“This critical edition thus honours Price’s development of the Fantasie Nègre genre into a collective body of works, her Four Fantasies for piano, presented in a single volume.”
For those wishing to perform any or all of these four Fantasies, Ege’s new edition is clearly the primary recommendation. It would also now accordingly be useful for exam boards to reconsider and standardise the appropriate level for these works in their diploma syllabus.
Closing thoughts
A number of musicians I’ve spoken to have candidly admitted off the record that they are yet to be convinced that Price’s music has sufficient intrinsic merit to outlast the current, remarkable revival of interest in her work. Certainly she was a cultural trailblazer, but beyond our initial curiosity, what of her music’s lasting appeal?
These two volumes each make highly convincing musical arguments for the enduring value and high quality of Price’s piano works in my view, showcasing the equal excellence of her dramatic concert works and her lighter domestic pieces.
Michael Clark’s Edition Peters volume offers a superb overview of her contribution to the post-Romantic literature, and I have no doubt that several of these pieces will establish a continuing place in the amateur and educational repertoire. Combined with his previous Rediscovered Gems collection, there are treasures aplenty to satisfy pianists across many years of their musical development and continuing enjoyment.
Meanwhile, Samantha Ege’s stunning edition of the four Fantasies provides compelling evidence of Price’s remarkable compositional mastery and intimate understanding of the piano. Here is a historic addition to the virtuoso repertoire whose quality, appeal, and cultural value should not, I think, ever again be overlooked.
I have little doubt that in the coming years we will discover yet more valuable music from Florence Price’s pen, as yet still hidden from the wider attention it deserves, and based on these brilliant publications, I certainly find that an exciting prospect!
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