PriceFest

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2020, the University of Maryland launched PriceFest — an annual festival devoted to American composer Florence Price.

The plan was to stage performances of works in the context of lectures and panels devoted to this long-neglected African-American composer. The COVID-19 outbreak forced the first PriceFest to be an online event only, but that worked so well the 2021 PriceFest arranged for more livestreamed and interactive Zoom events.

When Florence Price died at 66 in 1953, she left behind instrumental, orchestra and vocal works that languished unperformed for decades until a revival of interest in music by women composers and composers of color led to a serious second look at her compositions and a rediscovery of their quality and importance.

In 2009, a couple renovating an abandoned and dilapidated house in St. Anne, Illinois once owned by Price found a substantial collection of previously unknown Price scores.  

As Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, commented, “not only did [Florence] Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Florence Price (1887-1953): Mississippi Suite; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, conductor; Koch 75182

On This Day

Births

• 1561 - Italian composer Jacopo Peri, in Rome. His setting of Rinuccini's poem Dafne, staged in 1600, is credited as the first opera.

Deaths

• 1813 - Bohemian composer Jan Krittel Vanhal (Johann Baptist Wanhal), 74, in Vienna

Premieres

• 1882 - Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture, on an all-Tchaikovsky program presented during an Art and Industrial Exhibition in Moscow (Julian date: Aug. 8)

• 1943 - Manuel Ponce: Violin Concerto, in Mexico City, conducted by Carlos Chavez

• 1956 - Bliss: Edinburgh Overture, at the opening of the Edinburgh Festival of Music and Drama

• 1958 - Menotti: opera Maria Golovin, at the International Exposition in Brussels, Belgium

• 1961 - John Harbison: Duo for flute and piano, at the Brooklyn Museum, with flutist Neil Zaslaw and pianist Juliette Arnold

• 1965 - Harrison Birtwistle: Tragoedia for chamber ensemble, at Wardour Castle in England, during the Castle Summer School of Music, by the Melos Ensemble conducted by Lawrence Foster

• 1973 - Carl Orff: cantata De Temporum Fine Commedia (A Play of the End of Time) at the Salzburg Festival, with Herbert von Karajan conducting

• 1979 - Harbison: opera The Winter’s Tale in San Francisco

• 1980 - Rubbra: Symphony No. 11, in London by the BBC Northern Symphony

• 1992 - Joan Tower: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 5 (dedicated to Joan Harris), at the opening of the Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado

• 2004 - Zhou Long: The Immortal for orchestra, at a BBC Proms concerts with the BBC Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting

• 2004 - Peter Maxwell Davies: Naxos Quartet No. 4 (Children’s Games), in the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo (Norway) during the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, by the Maggini Quartet