Max Bruch and Florence Price: Violin Concertos album review — clean, eloquent performances

After more than half a century of neglect, the music of Florence Price is suddenly everywhere. To judge from the many recordings of her little-known and sometimes previously unheard orchestral and chamber works that have appeared in the past few years, her time has come.

Price died in 1953, aged 66, but it was only in 2009 that a huge cache of her music manuscripts was discovered in a dilapidated house in St Anne, Illinois, which she had used as a holiday home. Among the many works awaiting discovery were her two violin concertos.

Although both concertos have been recorded before, this new recording ups the ante. Young violinist Randall Goosby is paired with the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose high-quality recordings of Price’s symphonies were a highlight of 2021.

It cannot be said that the loosely constructed Violin Concerto No 1 is Price at her finest, though it taps into an American strain that is immediately distinctive. The Violin Concerto No 2, a single movement of just 15 minutes, marks a considerable advance in subtlety and is rich in the heartfelt melody that makes Price such a loveable composer.

There is much of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky here and, to a lesser extent, Max Bruch. Goosby pairs Price’s concertos with Bruch’s popular Violin Concerto No 1 and displays exemplary care throughout, ensuring clean, eloquent, underplayed performances. Nézet-Séguin and his first-rate Philadelphia Orchestra again prove that Price’s music deserves a wider audience.

★★★★☆

‘Max Bruch and Florence Price: Violin Concertos’ is released by Decca