Quintet for Piano and Strings (Piano Quintet No. 2) in E minor (score and parts) by Florence Price
This is a print-on-demand edition and will have the date of printing on the cover.
Florence Price (1887-1953) was an American composer and an influential figure in Chicago's Black Renaissance. Born and raised in Arkansas, she enrolled at Boston's New England Conservatory at age 15 and showed incredible promise. She eventually moved to Chicago, where she wrote most of her works and became the first African-American woman to be programmed by a major orchestra.
In 2009, a substantial catalogue of her compositions was rescued from an abandoned Illinois house slated for demolition. Since then, her music has rapidly re-entered the wider classical canon. Beautifully romantic and infused with the rich cultural heritage of African-American idioms, her music represents an integral part of America's musical history and, as Alex Ross of the New Yorker asserts, ''deserves to be widely heard.''
This Quintet for Piano and Strings (numbered as her second Piano Quintet) remains a mystery in Florence Price scholarship. It should not be confused with her epic Quintet in A minor from 1936; instead, this is a much shorter and more eclectic undated, possibly a part of an otherwise lost larger work from the 1930s or a later work contemporary with her folksong chamber works. It has dramatic romantic undertones in the first movement, lyrical spiritual lyricism in the second, and bubbly, colorful textures in the finale--a worthy addition to the American chamber repertory. Advanced level, Grade 5. Includes score and parts.
