Praise from Limelight Magazine for Randall Goosby’s and Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s new album

Price, Bruch: Violin Concertos (Randall Goosby, Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin)
By Phillip Scott
Limelight Magazine
July 12, 2023

Goosby is interested in neglected composers, so inevitably he gravitated to the newly unearthed Violin Concertos of Florence Price, the Black, 20th-century composer whose underrated output is currently being re-examined. One of the drivers of that trend is Nézet-Séguin, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who recently recorded Price’s First and Third Symphonies.

The scores of Price’s two Violin Concertos (the Second in one movement) were discovered in a dilapidated summer house in Illinois in 2009. Both are traditional and romantic in style, showcasing the virtuosity of the soloist. Like Price’s three extant symphonies – her Second is lost – they reveal her skill in writing for orchestra, but have less of an obvious African-American influence. The Second Concerto, written in 1952, the year before Price’s death, is a succinct masterpiece. Captured in live performances, Goosby and Nézet-Séguin revel in the music’s joyfulness and lyrical warmth (equally so in the short piece, Adoration).

In an accompanying interview, Goosby is asked to relate Max Bruch’s well-known Concerto No. 1 to the Black experience. (Stupid question: nobody asked Kyung Wha Chung how it related to her Korean experience!) You just have to hear him play the first theme to know why Bruch’s concerto is included. This is a full-blooded, exciting and communicative performance. No question: Randall Goosby is the real deal.

Read the full article here.