Presto Editor's Choice
November 2021

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, John Jeter

Price, F: Symphony No. 3 in C minor
Price, F: The Mississippi River
Price, F: Ethiopia's Shadow in America

Florence Price was one of the most versatile and accomplished American musicians of her generation whose unstoppable creativity and earliest successes were set against the backdrop of 1930s economic depression. The Third Symphony expresses aspects of Price’s cultural heritage in a symphonic framework. Avoiding direct references to existing folk songs and dances, it creates highly distinctive African spiritual moods and uses the syncopated rhythms of the Juba in its jazzy third movement. This world premiere recording of Ethiopia’s Shadow in America traces the American experience of enslaved Africans, while The Mississippi River suite quotes several famous spirituals, capturing the struggles of Black migration across the United States.

"The string sound in particular is more austere than that on the Philadelphia Orchestra's recent recording of the Third Symphony - but both approaches pay their own dividends in this music, and Price devotees (or anyone who can't wait until the New Year for the rival recording to appear on CD) will want to hear this account from Vienna. The main attraction, though, is The Mississippi River Suite, in which Price's arresting, expansive treatment of spirituals is at once thrilling and profoundly moving." - Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical, November 2021.