Swietlicki / Johnson - Price: Choral Works [CD]

Florence Price had an abiding love of literature, setting poets affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance as well as Byron and Robert Frost, among others. Her largest choral work is Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, which sets a poem published in 1914 imagining Lincoln surveying the modern world with dismay. It's chorale-like passages and fugal finale, allied to her use of spirituals, gives the cantata a thoughtful, sometimes introspective grandeur. Song of Hope, which uses Price's own text, is an emotionally intense supplication that also draws on spirituals. Charming smaller settings devoted to the natural world, and two sacred numbers, complete the album.