Karen LeFrak (1948- ) 
American Promise 
Duration: ca. 9 minutes 

What to listen for: LeFrak employs bold brass choruses to evoke a sense of hope and affirmation. 

Part of the excitement of any Florida Orchestra season is hearing a new work, the freshly composed music unfolding either at a premiere or making its initial rounds in concert halls. Karen LeFrak’s American Promise, written to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, debuted in March in Miami, followed by performances in Tucson and now the Tampa Bay area. The London Symphony Orchestra also recorded the piece and released it on vinyl, along with two other related works by LeFrak, Lady Liberty Suite and Prairie Dawn. 

Scored for full orchestra, American Promise links a “freedom” motif through all four sections: Fanfare, March, Americana and Fanfare Return. Like Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, it begins with a declarative brass theme, then follows with strings evoking the stillness of dawn. The clarinet offers a delicate theme while the orchestra creates a harmonic expanse to depict the American landscape. 

“I was inspired to communicate what America means to me and what I hoped it means to other Americans,” said LeFrak. “This means conveying in music the ideals of freedom, liberty, gratitude and hope.” 

The opening motif isn’t meant to describe freedom literally, she added, but rather “its bold, questioning character invites the listener to think about freedom. As the motif returns in different keys, rhythms and orchestrations, it grows into an affirmation.” 

Florence Price (1887-1953) 
Piano Concerto in One Movement 
Duration: ca. 19 minutes 

What to listen for: Price weaves into the finale movement the juba, a dance of African-American slaves on plantations. 

The Florida Orchestra this year shines the light on a number of important women composers, including Florence Beatrice Price, who in 1933 became the first Black woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major orchestra. Don’t feel bad if her name draws a blank. She’s curiously absent from Daniel Kingman’s book American Music: A Panorama and gets but a half-page in the 27-volume New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 

But there’s a reason for such slights. Price was nearly forgotten until 2009 – a half-century after her death – when a couple bought an abandoned home in St. Anne, Ill., where Price once spent her summers. They found a bundle of manuscripts, books and diaries hidden away, including original scores for her Fourth Symphony, two violin concertos and parts of the piano concerto on this program. The discovery sparked a resurgence of interest and a scholarly evaluation of Price’s legacy, followed by publication and performances of the missing scores.  

Long before her “disappearance,” Price honed her talent as an organist for silent films and jingle writer for early radio. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and served as head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University. When she returned home to her native Arkansas to raise a family and teach, she faced relentless racism. She moved her family to Chicago in 1932, divorced and focused on composing. 

After the success of her Symphony No. 1, she composed the quasi-Romantic Piano Concerto in D Minor (also known as Piano Concerto in One Movement) and sat at the keyboard for the 1934 premiere at the Chicago Music College. 

Cast in three connected sections within a single movement, it opens with the orchestra setting the tone for a florid piano cadenza reminiscent of Franz Liszt, and rich support from the brass carries it to a spirited climax. The next section is an adagio with a sadly lyrical piano theme accompanied by the oboe. The Gershwin-like allegretto evokes the African-American juba, a dance of Black slaves on southern plantations who created rhythms by stomping their feet and slapping and clapping their arms, legs and chest. 

“Florence Price is one of the great American composers who has only come to light recently, so this is an opportunity for us to share her important voice,” said TFO Music Director Michael Francis. “She helped encourage other female composers and composers of color to find their own voice.” 
 

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) 
Scheherazade, Op. 35 
Duration: ca. 42 minutes 

What to listen for: The winding violin melody is the voice of Scheherazade as she tells stories to spare her life. 

Some composers excel at crafting tunes, while others are rhythmic innovators. Then there are those with a knack for synchronizing all of an orchestra’s moving parts. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had this gift, a master orchestrator who gave us works of rich, opulent coloring and exoticism, notably Scheherazade, the Russian Easter Festival Overture and Capriccio Espagnol.  

Rimsky-Korsakov was a member of The Mighty Five, a group of Russian composers that included Modest Mussorgsky, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin and Mily Balakirev. Their aim was a Russian nationalist school, free of the influence of Germany, France and Italy (an absent Tchaikovsky preferred European traditions, albeit with a Slavic soul). Rimsky-Korsakov, however, was frustrated by the erratic skills of his friends − one was a drunk − and wasn’t shy about “correcting” uneven or incomplete works. His fingerprints are all over Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Boris Godunov, and Borodin’s Prince Igor. 

He wrote his most popular large work, Scheherazade, as a four-part symphonic suite based on the Arabian stories from A Thousand and One Nights and connects each section through an irresistible violin melody. The composer offered his own notes on the story of an insanely jealous Sultan who executes his wives on their wedding night, until his latest bride, Scheherazade, fascinates him with exotic tales and delays her own demise. 

“The Sultan, convinced of the falseness and inconsistency of all women, had sworn an oath to put to death each of his wives after the first night,” the composer writes. “However, Scheherazade saved her own life by arousing his interest in the tales she told during 1001 nights. 

“Driven by curiosity, the Sultan postponed her execution from day to day, and at last abandoned his design. Scheherazade told miraculous stories to the Sultan. For her tales she borrowed verses from the poets and words from folk songs, combining fairy tales with adventure.” 

Rimsky-Korsakov assigned the poignant violin theme to Scheherazade, while the brass and low strings suggest the Sultan. The four movements include: 

The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship – Sets the scene with the ocean’s violence against the sweetly lyrical violin. 

The Story of the Kalendar Prince – A melancholy bassoon and fast tempos tell of the wandering prince. 

The Young Prince and Princess – This lyrical section reflects the love between the two characters. 

The Festival of Baghdad and Shipwreck – The sounds of a raucous marketplace give way to Sinbad’s ship crashing against the rocks, and a return of the opening violin theme. 

Kurt Loft is a journalist and music critic who has written for the Tampa Tribune and other publications and arts groups for 45 years. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he lives in St. Petersburg.