Bachtrack review: Jessie Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs premieres in Sun Valley
Review of Sun Valley Music Festival’s The American Experience concert on August 7, 2021
By Laurence Vittes
Excerpt:
“The concert opened with Florence Price’s 12-minute, three-movement Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, written in 1933 alongside the first of her four symphonies. Neale sculpted phrases simply and elegantly from the star-studded Festival Orchestra and paid attention to Price’s attractive writing, her Brahms-like gestures, beautiful solos for the principal violin and cello, and the jaunty tune that works up into something akin to a samba rhythm at the end. The cross-cultural musical influences between Ethiopia and America were not immediately apparent but the energy was good and the idea of shadows an appropriately troubling one.”