On Friday, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra played SLSO premieres of work by two Black women composers: Valerie Coleman (born in 1970) and Florence Price (1891-1953). Music director Stéphane Denève spoke to the crowd at the Touhill Performing Arts Center about Price, who was neglected in her time because of discrimination by gender and race. Denève said that he wished Price were here to enjoy the revival of her work but said he would wait to celebrate until the second SLSO performance of Price’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor to show she had become part of “the canon of the future.”
The focus on the composer tragically neglected in her time and no longer alive was fitting and quite moving. However, this weekend St. Louis also is seeing SLSO’s first performances of Coleman’s Umoja: Anthem of Unity (2019) and – holy smokes! – what a thrilling piece of music. Let’s make room for it in the canon of the future, too.
Umoja started off sounding like contemporary outsider music, complete with bowed vibraphone (a new one, to my ears). Then assistant concertmaster Erin Schreiber bust out its signature spiritual melody on the violin – and the piece never stopped changing for the rest of its delightful 14 minutes. Umoja means “unity” in Swahili, but I think this composition would be even more aptly named Mabadiliko, Swahili for “change.”
We heard beautiful instrumental pairings within sections – flute with oboe, basson with clarinet, trombone with tuba – and dynamic writing and performances within the strings, with themes and rhythms moving almost visibly between the violins, violas and double basses. The interplay of varying shadings of tone and attacks on the instruments was endlessly spry and inventive. The percussive effects – on timpani, snare, tambourine and woodblocks – as the melody and focus changed worked like magical musical refresh buttons. I kept picturing the orchestral equivalent of a new, brilliant pingball game, as the themes pinged and zipped from instrument to instrument and section to section, always surprising and flashing as if with light – this was music you could see.
Denève responded on the conductor’s podium to the ever-changing music, moving about at his most ambidexterous and multi-jointed. During the ovation, he pounded his copy of the score with his baton, the way he applauds the composer at an SLSO premiere, but in this case I also felt a giddiness, like he was saying, “Can you believe that?”
The St. Louis premiere of Price’s symphony was a crowd pleaser, too. She wrote so fluently within the symphonic tradition that it deepens the criminality of her being ignored because of gender and racial discrimination. According to the program notes by John Michael Cooper, Symphony No. 3 was performed exactly one time in Price’s lifetime, on November 6, 1940. Even now – but from the point of view of 1940, especially – what is not to like about this music? Denève included on the program a Samuel Barber concerto premiered just three months after Price’s symphony, and that pairing sounded exactly right. If you enjoy Barber or even their contemporary Aaron Copeland, then Florence Price fits right in your canon.
Like Coleman, Price keeps things moving. She opens somber, echoing a spiritual, then uplifts the mood through glissandos on flute and violin, setting the stage for a swirling character to her melodic lines that needs a tip-top orchestra like this one to fully express it. She gets incredibly brassy, with trombones and trumpets strutting along, supported by the tuba and eight (!) percussionists. In the second movement, the bassoon takes up the somber opening folk melody, then Hall orchestrates it all the way out in all sections with consumate artistry, adding distinctive touches with the harp and bells.
The third movement evoked American popular favorites of Price’s time like Glenn Miller’s band. This is the festive music one associates with the score for a county fair scene in a film of that period. These popular references should not diminish a sophisticated piece of symphonic writing – to the contrary, it shows how in touch Price was with her own time, which deepens the tragedy of her exclusion. It says much about this country that a Black woman in 1940 could capture so exuberantly the spirit of a bustling, functional democracy that treated her as less than an equal human being. In the final movement, when those eight percussionists really came out to play, and the cymbals, snare, timpani, and gong rolled us out, Price imagined a rhythmic and dynamic democracy that we should all aspire to.
The Barber piece deftly programmed as contemporary to Price was his Violin Concerto of 1941, with Augustin Hadelich taking the solo. Barber sounded so good coming after Coleman, who wrote for ears that had heard and hands that had played Barber. You could say Barber’s concerto provided some of the elements Coleman chopped and screwed into her musical pingball game. Coming after Coleman, Barber sounded so much simpler and spacious – until Hadelich took off like a musician possessed. The soloist stood so close to the conductor’s podium, Denève could have reached out and grabbed his violin by the scroll. Between solo passages, Hadelich looked searchingly up into the audience. He looked a little lost, but in a good way, in the way it’s good to lose yourself in a song.
For his encore, Hadelich busted out “Wild Fiddler’s Rag” by Mark O’Conner. My guest said it sounded like “French settler music.” The crowd recognized the tune and began to murmur with recognition and then laugh aloud, right in the middle of the performance. We were sitting behind a group of 8th graders from the Special School District who were the most respectful audience members I have ever shared a concert hall with. Clearly, they had been told not to applaud between movements of a piece. One child slapped her hand very near her leg after movements without making a sound to show respect for the performers without breaking the code of silence.
