Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price in Bloomington, MN

Florence Price
is a rare, perhaps unique, example of a composer whose output was vastly increased in size after the discovery of a cache of lost manuscripts, and this process is still going on. The 19 songs on
Beyond the Years
were found in collections of
Price
's papers, mostly at the University of Arkansas and the University of Pennsylvania; the detailed booklet gives full bibliographic information for both music and texts. There is little here of the novel incorporation of African American musical elements that often characterizes
's works in larger forms, yet the songs do not feel derivative of late Romantic styles. There is an attractive sense of a personal response to the texts, which range from
Lord Byron
to poems by various 20th century writers, including
Paul Laurence Dunbar
.
wrote one text herself and seems to have been rather adventurous in seeking out other poetry that fit her aims; she also modifies a few of the texts at will. Sample the admirably compact
Desire
to a text by the blind poet
Orma Jean Surbey
at the beginning of the program.
Karen Slack
is a rising soprano who has been heard in major operatic productions and here downsizes her creamy voice effectively to song dimensions; she is idiomatically recorded at a Goshen College auditorium in Indiana, and her balances with accompanist
Michelle Cann
are accurate and natural. This may not be absolutely top-drawer
, but it will be of great interest to fans of the composer, for the music offers insight into the woman behind the music. Music students of a progressive cast of mind have been flocking to
's smaller works, and this release will give them more to choose from once printed versions become available. ~ James Manheim