BBC Music Magazine: Revival (Michelle Cann)

BBC Music Magazine
By Kate Wakeling

Acclaimed pianist Michelle Cann has long been a champion of African-American composer Florence Price, and this fine new recording brings together two substantial works by Price for solo piano alongside Margaret Bonds’s glorious Spiritual Suite.

Born in Arkansas in 1887 in the midst of the Jim Crow segregation laws, Florence Price showed early talent at the piano and went on to forge a remarkable path as a composer. Her series of Fantasie nègre for solo piano (the first of which was premiered by a young Margaret Bonds), were composed across the 1930s and ’40s: they present a new musical genre which fused elements of European classical music with African-American spirituals. Each of the Fantasie nègre included here is intricately constructed, and Cann’s vivid performances bring out a terrific depth of emotion – among many such fine moments, the final rendition of the spiritual ‘Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass’ in No. 1 is breathtakingly powerful. Price’s Piano Sonata in E minor is every bit as accomplished and Cann’s reading is poised yet vital, drawing out the work’s vibrant polyrhythms and creating a wonderful sense of line in the luscious slow movement.

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