Avalon String Quartet - Price & Sowerby: Music for String Quartet (2024) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: I. Moderato
02. String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: II. Andante cantabile
03. String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: III. Juba. Allegro
04. String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: IV. Finale. Allegro
05. String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: I. Languidly, Darkly - Fast, with Dash
06. String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: II. Very Fast
07. String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: III. Slowly, Rhapsodically
08. String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: IV. Recitative. Broadly - Fugue. Moderately Fast, Yet with Broad Sweep
09. 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 1, Calvary. Adagio vigoroso
10. 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 2, Clementine. Andantino
11. 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 3, Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. Andante cantabile
12. 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 4, Shortnin' Bread. Allegro
13. 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 5, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Andantino

Florence Price and Leo Sowerby were both prominent members of the Chicago music community in the 1930s and 1940s, and they are known to have respected each other’s work. Most of Florence Price’s compositions remained unpublished at her death, and her String Quartet in A minor was not performed in her lifetime. Its African American vernacular idioms and colorful harmonic language are characteristics shared in the famous melodies woven into the later Five Folksongs in Counterpoint. From its brooding opening through propulsive rhythms, expressive lyrical melodies and fugal finale, this premiere recording of Sowerby’s String Quartet in G minor reveals a work undeserving of its decades of obscurity. This recording is very much part of an encouraging rediscovery of Florence Price, the first African American female to have a symphonic work performed in Chicago back in 1933, coupled with Leo Sowerby’s unpublished String Quartet in G minor. This is the kind of release that adds significantly to our knowledge of American classical music in the 1930s, topped off with the attraction of Price’s better-known Five Folksongs in Counterpoint from 1951.

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