MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Crotchet

 

Samuel BARBER (1910-1981)
Adagio for strings op.11 (1938) [8:35]
Knoxville - Summer of 1915 (1948) [15:40]
Barbara Hendricks (soprano)
London SO/Michael Tilson Thomas
Violin Concerto op. 14 (1939) [24:10]
Overture to the School for Scandal op.5 (1931) [8:24]
Essay for Orchestra No. 1 op. 12 (1937) [9:18]
Medea's Dance of Vengeance op.32a (1946) [13:06]
Elmar Oliveira (violin)
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin
rec. May 1994, Studio No. 1, Abbey Road, London (Adagio, Knoxville); April 1986 (Concerto), 3 May 1988 (opp. 5, 12, 32a) Powell Hall, Saint Louis, Missouri. DDD 
EMI CLASSICS AMERICAN CLASSICS 2066252 [79:43] 
Experience Classicsonline


This is the most generously timed of the first harvest of EMI Classics' American Classics series. It's bound to appeal to the beginner and the Barber curious - a good collection too although by no means absolutely perfect. After all you get the most famous Barber in the ubiquitous Adagio. The saturation-romantic Violin Concerto is now becoming an increasingly common disc-mate to the Korngold. 

Tilson Thomas's Adagio is a stranger to glitz instead going down the track of dignity and tender feeling. Knoxville is to a prose-poetic nostalgic text by James Agee – the words are not printed in the booklet. Barbara Hendricks engages with the text but her operatic chops sometimes get in the way of the necessary sincerity and sometimes of enunciation. This however remains a fine version and Hendricks shows she can encapsulate the innocence of the child narrator - "On the rough wet grass on the backyard" (8:10) - and the heartbreaking home scene recollected from adulthood. Still my preference remains for Molly McGurk (Regis), Karina Gauvin (Naxos – see review), Sylvia McNair (Telarc – see review), Dawn Upshaw (Nonesuch) and the classic Eleanor Steber (Sony – see review) although when I played the latter the other day Steber seemed harder-toned than I had recalled. Tilson Thomas treats the score like a bloom easily bruised and his delicacy pays off. Oliveira and Slatkin again handle the Concerto with respect and do not load it up with the sort of supercharged cargo that we find with Isaac Stern's classic CBS-Sony version - effectively the only one for many years. This is an eloquent though played down account alongside the hard glare of the Stern, commanding though he is. 

The School for Scandal overture effervesces like an American Bartered Bride. The First Essay shows Barber at his most broodingly romantic and one can see where works such as Flagello's First Symphony (see review) came from. The Essay – first of three - was premiered by Toscanini at the same concert that saw the first performance of the Adagio. The Medea ballet is amongst my favourite Barber (see review). It is quintessential Barber and is here given with an understatement that serves the boiling climaxes well but which could overall have one with more torment as one finds in Measham’s LSO versions on the Regis disc where the Scene from Shelley and the two Essays are given volcanically eruptive performances by David Measham with the LSO (see review). 

A fine, dignified and effective collection glowing with the radiance of integrity.

Rob Barnett
 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.