Donald Macleod traces Florence Price’s life and career after achieving national recognition for her music.

Florence Price became a highly successful classical composer, organist, pianist and teacher of music during the 20th century in America. She was the first African-American woman to be recognised as a composer of symphonic music, and also the first African-American woman to have her works performed by one of the world’s leading orchestras. In collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, BBC Radio 3 launched the Forgotten Women Composers Project. Championed by the composer and educator Shirley Thompson, Florence Price became a particular focus for the project. Scores by Florence Price were located and recorded by BBC orchestras and choirs. It will be the first time Florence Price has been featured on Composer of the Week, and the series is supplemented by many specially recorded works.

Donald Macleod delves into the life and career of Florence Price during the 1930s, by the time she’d achieved national recognition for her first symphony, winning the Rodman Wannamaker Musical Contest. She’d now broken out of the ghetto, and her music was being received well in both white and black circles. This was also a time when she was in demand as a performer, teacher, and also an orchestrator for the Chicago radio station WGN. It was the conductor Frederick Stock who gave the premiere of her symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and amongst those in the audience were George Gershwin. It was a productive period of Price as a composer, and she soon started work on a piano concerto. This work would also be a triumph for the composer, and she started to develop partnerships with different ensembles including the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, and also a choir which asked permission if they could take her name, becoming the Florence Price A Capella Chorus.

Song for Snow
BBC Singers
Elizabeth Burgess, piano
Benjamin Nicholas, conductor

Sinner Don’t Let This Harvest Pass
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Mike Seal, conductor

Poem of Praise
BBC Singers
Elizabeth Burgess, piano
Benjamin Nicholas, conductor

Piano Concerto in D minor
Karen Walwyn, piano
New Black Music Repertory Ensemble
Leslie B. Dunner, conductor

Dances in the Canebrakes
Althea Waites, piano

Produced by Luke Whitlock, for BBC Wales Show less