Pianist
Samantha Ege posits the composers represented here as examples of the Black Renaissance Woman, a creative figure from the Harlem Renaissance era. Not all were part of that scene;
Helen Hagan was a Yale student who lived in Connecticut, and several of the others were connected to Chicago. However, they reflect impulses in common, and they work together well on a program that is unusual in its inspiration. Black composers tend to be incorporated into concerts and recordings devoted mostly to music by whites or else to focus on a single composer, but the mixture of works here reveals several different solutions to, for example, the problem of how to incorporate African American vernacular influences into a European late Romantic language. The solutions here are entirely different;
Margaret Bonds is capable of full-throated blues, while
Florence B. Price uses Joplinesque ragtime syncopations to generate an energetic finale to a work that otherwise avoids these influences (her
Piano Concerto in C minor and the
Piano Concerto of
Hagan are transcribed for two pianos). The
Negro Dance for piano of
Nora Holt is also heavily influenced by Black dance music. Elsewhere, the African American influence is subtler, coming in the form of pentatonic shadings and light syncopations. The album as a whole conveys something of the musical grammars that were available to an African American composer of the time, and
Ege's precise readings, neither missing nor overdoing the vernacular element, serve the music well. Another attraction here is the presence of some rarely heard composers whose selections suggest riches yet to be discovered.
Bonds and
Price are well enough represented on recordings, but
Hagan and
Betty Jackson King are much less so, and
Nora Holt, a famously flamboyant character of the era, is almost never played. This is because many of her compositions were lost, but not all of them were, and it is good to have this sprightly work on recordings. Essential for collections of classical music by African Americans, this album is enjoyable for anyone and suggests new programming directions. ~ James Manheim