Florence Price, who was one of my major musical discoveries (maybe "revelations" is a better term?) of 2020, wrote this wonderful String Quartet in G Major in 1929, and...that's just about all the information I can find about it. It's worth remembering that some of Price's music was lost after her death, and more would have remained forgotten had a cache of her papers and manuscripts not been found in a dilapidated house in Illinois many years after her passing.
This quartet opens with a beautifully lyrical allegro, sunny and cheerful. But it's the second movement where the quartet really shines: combining a slow tune that is redolent of old spirituals with a more bouncy section that's almost jazzlike, it's in the second movement that you can really feel Price's Black heritage.
This is the website for Laena Batchelder, that quartet's lead violinist, by the way. She seems very talented and with a good taste for eclectic music.
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