FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953): Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Mississippi River Suite, The Oak.

Description: The first black woman composer to attain national recognition, Price reflects the romantic nationalist style of her period while making especial use of African-American musical forms in her compositions. The Oak is a 13-minute tone-poem which, after a morose introduction, features an expressive series of musical passages tending toward the introspective. The suite is a half-hour trip down the mighty Mississippi whose sub-heading, "The River and the Songs of Those Dwelling Upon its Banks", is as perfect a description as one could ask for, mixing original melodies with instantly recognizable traditional ones. The symphony (1940) surely would have delighted Dvorák. Laid out in the classic four-movement form, it is rich in beautiful (original) melodies with a tinge of French Impressionism in the orchestration, jazz and Latin American dance forms and, in its scherzo, Juba Dance, characteristic antebellum African-American dance rhythms. The Women's Philharmonic; Apo Hsu. REISSUE. Original 2001 Koch International Classics release.