Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews
Florence Price (1887-1953) is rightly, if rather belatedly, recognised today as one of America’s most important composers of the twentieth century.
Price had some success during her lifetime, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuting her Symphony No. 1 in E minor, marking the first major orchestral performance of music by a black woman. Several of her works were published while she was alive, but it seems her estate did not effectively preserve her legacy, and sadly most of her music was forgotten in the years following her death.
Then, in 2009 an unsuspecting couple renovating the property that had once been Price’s summer home discovered hundreds of abandoned manuscripts packed in boxes there. Bringing this wealth of music to a wider market has been a complex process, but with her music no longer in copyright, it can finally be evaluated and made more widely available to musicians.
Florence Price: Rediscovered Gems for solo piano is a landmark publication, brought to us by Hal Leonard, and delivering a selection of twenty previously unpublished works suitable for intermediate players, around Grades 4-6, arranged by editor Michael Clark in approximate order of difficulty.
Continue reading Florence Price • Rediscovered Gems