Following her pioneering set of Amy Beach’s complete piano music on Guild, fellow American Kirsten Johnson turns her attention to the piano music of Florence Price, with this generous selection.

Florence (Smith) Price was a pianist first and foremost. Born on 9 April 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, she was taught the piano by her mother from a young age, playing in her first piano recital at the age of four and having her first composition published at eleven. She went on to study organ, piano and composition at the New England Conservatory in Boston, graduating as a double major with a teacher’s diploma in piano and a soloist’s diploma in organ.

After her studies, Florence returned to Arkansas to teach music at local colleges, and after several years moved to Atlanta to lecture at Clark University. In 1912 she moved back to Arkansas upon her marriage to Thomas Price and set up a piano studio. Price wrote masterfully for piano, leaving a significant contribution to the mainstream piano repertoire. She died of a stroke on 3 June 1953, in Chicago, Illinois. Her music and legacy live on.

Kirsten Johnson has released 22 discs of solo piano music, including the complete piano music of Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Benjamin Carr and James Hewitt. Her career as a recording artist was launched with the release of Këngë - Albanian Piano Music, in 2003, soon followed by a second disc of this amazing repertoire, Rapsodi.

Further recordings include two discs of Dmitri Kabalevsky’s music, featuring the first recording of his op.1, Three Preludes for Piano; and two discs of music by Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen and Hermann Goetz.

Recorded on 1-3 December 2021 at Potton Hall, Suffolk