Fantasie No. 1 in G Minor

by Florence Price

Dawn Posey, violin
Jack Kurutz, piano

Florence Price (1887-1953) wrote hundreds of compositions for voice, orchestra, and chamber ensembles.  Born in Little Rock, Arkansas she found her professional footing in Chicago. Price was the first black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major symphony orchestra.  During her life her music was performed by at least nine major symphony orchestras, and her vocal and instrumental chamber music and piano compositions were performed by some of the great soloists of her day.  She composed music that employs “classical” styles that had been the focus of her musical education alongside Black styles that were traditionally segregated out from the traditionally White repertoire, and often synthesized the two.  However during lifetime race and gender proved to be obstacles in publishing, and most of her music remained in manuscript at the time of her death.  Her reputation has been broadening in recent decades due to dedicated scholars who have worked to bring her music back into the concert hall.  A donation of manuscripts from her daughter and further acquisitions to the University of Arkansas in the 70s and 80s have helped to make her music accessible.  

Fantasie No. 1 in G minor for Violin and Piano was written in 1933, around the same time she was composing several other popular works- Fantasie Negre, the Piano Sonata in E Minor, the First Symphony, and the Piano Concerto in D minor.  Fantasie No. 1 is an excellent example of her ability to combine post-Romantic concert music idioms with those of African American folk song. After an opening cadenza from the violin, you hear evidence of African American influence in the seventh degree scale, gapped scales and chord-picking accompaniment.  The final transition back into the first theme is done with a call and response moment between the violin and piano, which then races into a virtuosic coda and fiery ending.