Avalon String Quartet – Price & Sowerby: Music for String Quartet (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Avalon String Quartet – Price & Sowerby: Music for String Quartet (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:20 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

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 Most of Florence Price’s compositions remained unpublished at her death, and her String Quartet in A minor was not performed in her lifetime.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first African American female to have a symphonic work performed in Chicago back in 1933, coupled with Leo Sowerby’s unpublished String Quartet in G minor.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.

Tracklist:
01. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: I. Moderato (10:00)
02. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: II. Andante cantabile (05:50)
03. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: III. Juba. Allegro (04:02)
04. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: IV. Finale. Allegro (05:53)
05. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: I. Languidly, darkly – Fast, with dash (13:47)
06. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: II. Very fast (06:03)
07. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: III. Slowly, rhapsodically (05:43)
08. Avalon String Quartet – Price: String Quartet in G Minor, H. 226: IV. Broadly – Moderately fast, yet with broad sweep (05:55)
09. Avalon String Quartet – Price: 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 1, Calvary. Adagio vigoroso (03:54)
10. Avalon String Quartet – Price: 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 2, Clementine. Andantino (02:47)
11. Avalon String Quartet – Price: 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 3, Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. Andantino cantabile (04:03)
12. Avalon String Quartet – Price: 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 4, Shortnin’ Bread. Allegro (01:17)
13. Avalon String Quartet – Price: 5 Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet: No. 5, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Andantino (05:00)

Download: