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Stories   >   KDFC: Play On, California! features Rachel Barton Pine - Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries

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KDFC: Play On, California! features Rachel Barton Pine - Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries

Posted: December 6, 2022

Chicago-based violinist Rachel Barton Pine plays 20th-century American composer Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Jonathon Heyward, on her new Cedille Records album Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries.

The new release marks the 25th anniversary of Pine’s pioneering 1997 Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries on Cedille.

 In addition to Pine’s 2022 recording of the Price concerto, the new album includes reissues of three performances from the earlier program, which Pine recorded with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras’ Encore Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Hege: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 5, No. 2; José White Lafitte’s Violin Concerto in F-sharp minor; and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Romance in G major for Violin and Orchestra (Cedille Records CDR 90000 214).

The 25th anniversary edition substitutes Price’s concerto, recorded in January 2022, for J.J.O., Le Chevalier de Meude-Monpas’ Concerto No. 1 in D major. Recent research indicates the 18th-century French composer probably was not of African descent, Pine writes in her introductory essay, in which she discusses the genesis of the original project and the initiatives it spawned.

The album booklet includes extensive program notes by Mark Clague, who wrote the liner notes for the original recording. Clague is professor of musicology and associate dean at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor.

Life-Changing Album - “Sometimes an album can change your life,” Pine writes, citing Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Cedille Records CDR 90000 035) as a personal example. 

That project, she says, “opened my eyes to the lack of awareness of and access to the repertoire and history of Black composers,” while generating “an outpouring of requests” for more information about the composers and where to obtain their music.

Subsequently, the violinist’s Rachel Barton Pine Foundation created its Music by Black Composers (MBC) initiative in 2001 to encourage awareness of, access to, and programming of the music of Black classical composers, which Pine calls “a primary focus of my research and advocacy efforts for over 20 years.”

MBC has collected more than 900 works by 450-plus Black composers from the 18th–21st centuries. Among many other activities, MBC publishes educational materials and offers numerous resources including free, public directories of more than 150 historic composers and over 300 living ones. musicbyblackcomposers.org.
 

Classical California KDFC writes….Violinist Rachel Barton Pine was able to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of her recordings by re-releasing it, benefitting from both scholarship and an unexpected discovery. “This is the record that I would have released back in ’97, if only I could have,” she says. That album, Violin Composers by Black Composers Through the Centuries, now includes a concerto that was thought to have been lost forever. “When I was doing the research to discover what works by composers of African descent existed for violin and orchestra, I found some wonderful music from the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and one of the libraries I visited showed me a single page of a manuscript of a Florence Price violin concerto. We knew that she had written two concertos, but they were considered to be lost to the world forever… And so, it was an absolute thrill when just a few years ago, this treasure trove of her manuscripts was discovered in an old trunk in an abandoned farmhouse. You can’t make something like that up!” Price’s second concerto, from 1952, takes the place on the re-issue of a piece that, while delightful, shouldn’t have been included: the Chevalier de Meude-Monpas was referred to as “Le Noir,” and so historians believed him to be Black – but it turns out it was because he had served in a French army regiment which rode black horses. Since the original release of the album, Rachel Barton Pine and her foundation have been finding, publishing, and creating a database works by Black composers, to help expand the performance repertoire. “There’s definitely a sea-change happening in the world… Audiences going from ‘Well, if it’s not already considered to be some of the greatest music, it must not be,’ to realizing, ‘Wait a sec, some of this music by composers of color, by women composers, didn’t have an opportunity to be considered as among the great music.’ We’re all missing out if we don’t get to hear the great music, and if everybody’s voice isn’t part of the conversation, our art really suffers.”
 

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