By Annabel Ross and Barney Zwartz
Florence Price’s orchestral work is celebrated in these new recordings by young violinist Randall Goosby.Credit: Decca
Randall Goosby, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Philadelphia Orchestra, Max Bruch and Florence Price Violin Concertos
★★★★★
Florence Price is a composer whose time has finally come, if 70 years too late for her to enjoy it. Price (1887-1953) was a composer, pianist, organist and music teacher whose career was undoubtedly curtailed by the twin challenges at the time of being a woman and black.
A modern movement to promote women and non-white composers has brought her to prominence, although she was already the first African-American woman to be recognised as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by an important orchestra (the Chicago Symphony).
The Price family was solidly middle class, and Florence became head of music at a university and married a lawyer. They left Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1927 and moved to Chicago to escape racial bigotry. There she divorced her abusive husband and raised her two daughters alone, remarrying briefly.
Price showed perseverance and determination as she gradually won a musical reputation as a distinctive voice. A devout Christian, she often drew on the tunes and rhythms of African-American spirituals.
Price was the first female African-American composer to be performed by an important orchestra.
Another factor in her recent rise is the discovery in 2009 in her summer home of dozens of unknown scores, including her two violin concertos. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nezet-Seguin has embarked on a project of recording all her orchestral works, and the latest is the world premiere of these two concertos with the gifted young black violinist Randall Goosby.
Both concertos are interesting works with much to please the ear, though they will scarcely challenge the Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Sibelius concertos in the soloist’s repertoire. Many commentators have observed how much the three-movement first concerto owes to Tchaikovsky, while the single-movement second concerto is far more individual and interesting.
Also on the disc is a beautifully dreamy short piece by Price called Adoration, arranged for violin and strings, plus the Bruch. Goosby’s playing and Nezet-Seguin’s accompaniment with the orchestra, taken from live performances last October, are simply masterly: ravishing tone and control, delicate nuance, a wonderful sense of shape and balance, avoiding the sort of Romantic overstatement the Bruch often attracts.
Goosby says in the CD notes that Price is not always the most accessible on first hearing, “due to her synthesis of clearly defined styles. She switches between soulful, traditional American folk melodies and modern takes on late-Romantic harmonic idioms. It’s a perfect example of what makes American music so great. It’s music from another place that has gone through the wringer and come out somewhere else.”
Price has also served as a talking point for critical race theorists in the United States. As a woman and black composer, she was clearly hindered by structural obstacles, yet conscious attempts to give black composers opportunities helped in getting her works performed. The extreme edge of these discussions paint Beethoven as merely an above-average composer promoted by a white establishment and perceive the piano as a white and male instrument.
But what seems to me lunacy at the fringes has had positive results in the middle, with a renewed focus on black musicians such as Joseph Bologne, the 18th century French composer and violinist, and 20th century American composers William Levi Dawson, William Grant Still and Price. I predict that Price will take her place in the canon as a fine composer, without disturbing the reputation of the giants.
- Barney Zwartz
Jessy Lanza, Love Hallucination
★★★
Hamilton, a southern port town in the Canadian province of Ontario, has produced a startling number of leftfield electronic musicians, many of whom share a similar musical palette. Among them are Dan Snaith (better known as Caribou), the duo dubbed Junior Boys, and Jessy Lanza. They’ve all worked together at various points but none as closely as Lanza and Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan.
Jessy Lanza sings the same ol’ song on Love Hallucination.
He co-produced her previous three albums, and while other producers contribute here, including German artist Tensnake, fellow Canadian Jacques Greene and British artist Pearson Sound, the most dominant musical personality is the one that Lanza began forging with Greenspan on her debut LP ten years ago. The music is wispy and candy-toned like fairy floss, while lyrically, Lanza delves into rather less sweet topics, but it’s a juxtaposition that can lose its impact with repetition.
It’s effective on the slyly discomfiting I Hate Myself, where the titular phrase plays on repeat throughout (“you’re so uncool” is the only other lyric to feature), while the plinking, calming melodies are befitting a sentiment far less brutal.
Lanza buries existential angst again on the record’s most buoyant track, Don’t Leave Me Now. What could be read as a basic plea for a lover to stay has a richer back-story, inspired by her nearly getting hit by a car in Los Angeles, triggering a period of agoraphobia. Heady sections of propulsive drum beats and a portentous bassline (perhaps provided by Pearson Sound) play off against Lanza’s familiar airy vocals and bouncing production with dynamic results that should translate especially well in a live setting.
Two-step maestro Jacques Greene is responsible for the skippy beats on the wistful Midnight Ontario, grounded by long bassy notes and Lanza’s occasional slips into a lower register. Her cooing falsetto is ever-present to an almost grating degree across the album, so when she does shift gears, it makes you listen harder to what’s being said.
Jessy Lanza: music that’s wispy and candy-toned like fairy floss.Credit: Landon Yost
Co-written with Tensnake, Limbo benefits from the bouncy disco sheen typically associated with the German producer. It’s another bubblegum-pop track that could be easily mistaken thematically for a fraught romance (“I could spend the night or I could go”; “I’m not good at saying no,” Lanza sings), but was actually inspired by a torturous stint unable to visit her family in Canada while waiting for a US green card.
Drive is a standout, an almost wholly instrumental piece that lends a pastel vibe to the driving-in-LA trope. Pops and bubbles of sound add character to gentler underlying bass notes, while a dreamy synth sequence towards the end creates a more beatific mood. It sounds like something Barbie might throw on in the car while coasting towards Malibu after sharing a spliff with friends.
Lanza is at her sultriest on Marathon, the “first time I’ve written explicitly about orgasms or played saxophone on one of my records,” she has said, and the boldness pays off. Her longtime fandom of Janet Jackson can be felt everywhere here, from the Janet-era sex-positivity to the interstitial giggles and don’t-f--k-with-me attitude. The spurt of sax sounds more welcome than it ought to, by the simple virtue of its distinctness. Despite the presence of multiple producers, there’s a continuity to Lanza’s sound that, four records in, is starting to feel a little stale.
On previous albums, most notably her first, there were weird, clubby and sinister passages and detours that added texture and intrigue to what was then a refreshing new arrival. A decade on, Lanza remains a singular voice, but it often feels like she’s singing the same song.
- Annabel Ross
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