Barber’s Capricorn
Concerto, a triple concerto scored,
like Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto
No. 2, for trumpet, oboe and flue
soloists, with strings, is cast in three
short movements. It was named after
Barber’s home at Mount Kisco, where
he retreated during service leave in
World War II, in the company of his
friend and fellow-composer Gian-Carlo
Menotti and Menotti’s son Chip. The
three movements reflect all three personalities.
The Concerto was named ‘Capricorn’ after
the fantastic winter light experienced
around Mount Kisco The music is ‘modern’
in style; Barber’s Romanticism is less
in evidence here, the music more astringent
and diamond bright but playful too with
a note of plaintiveness, introduced,
at one point, by a ‘Last Post’-like
trumpet call.
A Hand of Bridge
is amusing, jazz-based, cabaret-style
music to accompany a game of bridge
with singer/speakers. It is not far
removed from the world of Walton’s Façade.
One woman is preoccupied with deciding
what colour hat she will buy while the
first man worries that his illicit love
affair might be discovered. The work
is a jewel, a mini-satirical opera for
four characters, the four bridge players.
The second woman, to music of pathos,
bewails the pain of love and bereavement
while, to a morose drone and then exotic
rhythms, the other man has lewd thoughts
about being a sultan with lots of naked
girls and boys. The difficulty here
is that Naxos’s usual sparse booklet
allows no space for the libretto and
the uncredited singers (identified in
headnote from the Naxos website. Ed.),
especially the morose woman, are not
exactly shining examples of good diction.
Mutations from Bach,
a homage to Barber’s favourite composer,
is solemn yet majestic. It is scored
for four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, tuba and timpani. Alsop’s
reading makes an impressive impact and
is nicely balanced and impressively
spaced across the sound-stage.
Barber’s Vanessa
told the story of a woman whose lover
returns only to fall in love with her
daughter. The lovely Intermezzo from
the opera depicts the cold, remoteness
of Vanessa’s abode (chill harp arpeggios)
and the desolation that grips her heart
and the cry of anguished despair at
the impassioned climax.
Marin Alsop’s well-received
Barber cycle comes to its conclusion
with this album which ends with two
late works:
Fadograph of a Yestern
Scene was influenced by James Joyce’s
Finnegan’s Wake, one of Samuel
Barber’s favourite books. Alsop captures
very well the Debussy-like fragrant,
dreamy atmosphere of this impressionistic
music that seems to suggest an other-worldly,
possibly Arabian Nights, romance - an
opium-induced dream?
The music of Barber’s
Canzonetta was originally intended
to be part of an Oboe Concerto but the
composer, disillusioned after the catastrophic
failure of his opera Anthony and
Cleopatra, and in an alcoholic despair,
was too ill, and dying, to complete
it. His only student, Charles Turner
completed this beautiful last tribute
to Barber’s genius. I feel I cannot
do better than to quote Daniel Felsenfeld
at this point, "‘In its limited
way,’ writes Barbara Heyman, Barber’s
biographer, ‘the Canzonetta offers
an appropriate elegy to the conclusion
of Barber’s career.’ The tonality of
the work embraces every device Barber
loved, from Late Romanticism to the
more astringent modernist sounds, and
his ‘vocal’ writing for the oboe betrays
his deep, lifelong affinity for the
voice. This final work is almost a winnowing
down of Barber’s total musical self,
a beautiful intimate, quiet final offering."
Yes, and how sympathetically and movingly
Stéphane Rancourt and Marin Alsop
sing it!
Apart from some poor
diction singing in A Hand of Bridge,
this is a very worthy conclusion to
Alsop’s Barber cycle for Naxos.
Ian Lace
see also review
by Rob Barnett
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Marin Alsop
