Piano Concerto in One Movement

• Price composed this one-movement Piano Concerto in d minor in 1933, in the wake of the premiere of her award-winning Symphony No. 1 in e minor.¹
• The concerto premiered on June 24, 1934, at the commencement of the Chicago Musical College, where Price was pursuing graduate study in composition and orchestration. Price was the piano soloist.²

“As the concluding number on the lengthy program, Mrs. Price played her Concerto in D Minor for piano and orchestra, accompanied by the symphony orchestra of the college. Equal in length to some symphonies, the concerto, aside from its technical perfections, disclosed a thematic structure rich in syncopated and spiritual rhythms.”

The Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1934.³

• Price dedicated this concerto to her friend and patron, Helen Armstrong Andrews.⁴

“Thank you for the honor you are to do me which pleases me very much. I am glad that you have written something of the kind and can appear before the public and play the solo part. It will make you known and of course will help to advertise you. I think it is wonderful for a woman to be able to write music as you do and again I must tell you how proud I am of you and interested in your success.”

Helen Armstrong Andrews, to Florence Price, Oct. 24, 1933.⁵

• The concerto was performed again on October 12, 1934, at the Century of Progress Exposition. This time Price’s student and friend Margaret Bonds was the soloist, appearing with the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago under the direction of Ebba Sundstrom.⁶
• Price also created a two-piano version of this concerto, which turned out to be a very good thing, as her orchestral score was lost after her death. In 2011, composer Trevor Weston reconstructed the orchestration at the request of the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. The reconstructed concerto premiered on February 11, 2011.

1. Rae Linda Brown, “The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement,” American Music 11, no. 2 (1993): 185, accessed August 27, 2021, doi:10.2307/3052554.
2. Ibid., 186.
3. Quoted in Ibid.
4. Florence Price, Concerto in d minor in one movement for piano and orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer, 2020).
5.  Brown, “The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement,” American Music 11, no. 2, 186.
6. Rae Linda Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020), ebook.