Decca to Release Goosby’s Second Album

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

A little less than two years ago, Decca released the debut album of violinist Randall Goosby. Entitled Roots, this was a recital album, whose overall program was conceived as a celebration of the works of Black classical composers. One week from today Decca will release Goosby’s second album. This one will present three concertos performed with Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Philadelphia Orchestra; and, as was the case on Roots, one of the composers featured is Florence Price. As many readers will probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

In fact Price accounts for the lion’s share of the entire CD, since the album is the first commercial recording of both of Price’s violin concertos. The first of these is a three-movement concerto in D major, which, in the track listing, follows a more traditional three-movement concerto, Max Bruch’s Opus 26 in G minor. The first Price concerto is then followed by her second, a single-movement composition whose duration is about sixteen minutes. The album then concludes with a final nod to Price with a performance of her “Adoration.” This was included on the Roots album in its original setting for violin and piano, and on the new album Goosby plays an arrangement for violin and orchestra by Jim Gray.

Both of Price’s violin concertos were only discovered in 2009, when, as her Wikipedia page puts it, “a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois, which Price had used as a summer home.” The first of the violin concertos was composed in 1939, when Price was living in Chicago. The date on the second concerto is 1952, probably within a year of her death.

As a performer in San Francisco, Goosby made his debut in the Spotlight Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony. This series, which was launched by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen to be devoted entirely to debut performances, thus complementing the more familiar recitalists appearing in the Great Performers Series. Having established his “familiarity,” Goosby was selected as the concerto soloist for the very first subscription concert of the current season, giving a debut performance of Price’s second concerto with Salonen on the podium.

There will probably be readers that assume that the value in this new album resides primarily (if not entirely) in the Price selections. While it is true that my recordings of the Bruch concerto clearly overwhelm my options for listening to the Price concertos, I can still attest to the fact that, in his partnership with Nézet-Séguin, Goosby has managed to bring his own rhetorical knapsack to his approach to Bruch. Mind you, the Bruch concerto predates Price’s D major concerto by over half a century; but, on this recording, one could say that Goosby has selected it to “warm up” the listener in preparation for the broader scope of Price compositions. Like the Roots album, this new release provides a first-rate platform on which Goosby can present his personal approach to repertoire; and I, for one, have enjoyed following that approach.