The Music of America
Samuel BARBER (1910-1981)
SONY 88697 70278 2 [202:55]
Full tracklist at end of review
Sony Masterworks, drawing on their deep reserves of recorded American music,
have moved to celebrate America’s Independence Day (4 July 2010). The
Day has been marked with five compactly presented three-disc sets that make
up their The Music of America series.
The composers favoured are Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland,
Charles Ives and John Williams. No room it seems for Crumb or Ruggles or Carter
or Hovhaness or Piston or Hanson or Schuman or Paine or Farwell or Coerne
or Macdowell … oddly enough, Gershwin or Joplin. There are quite a few
old friends and memories among these discs and just one surprise - in the
Barber set.
While the selections are very good - if pretty familiar to established collectors
and music-lovers - the presentation has its irritations. The playing time
is not candidly stated on the sleeve for each disc by disc or even as a total.
Why? It’s also a bit of a faff getting discs out of the four-way cardboard
fold. The sleeve is not the most practical or durable of designs and tends
to result in getting finger-marks over the outer edge of the playing surface.
That said, these sets are not at all expensive and are a good way of gaining
an introduction to a major slice of the repertoire of each composer. The performances
have a settled authority about them and in general sound very good indeed.
BARBER
CD 1
This set has a very varied range of provenance with recordings from 1935 to
1992.
Schippers’ superbly calculated and mercurial School for Scandal
overture has so much more light and air about it than on previous issues.
In fact Schippers emerges from this set as a Barber exponent par excellence.
We then hear the first authorised issue on CD of Barber the baritone - he
came from a family of singers. It’s in his own Dover Beach and
is replete with seventy years of frying-pan sizzle. Barber serves up a wonderfully
mournful and rounded version with the Curtis Quartet but it is almost inevitably
for Barber specialists.
Slatkin delivers a finely Symphony No. 1 in all its Sibelian ochre-rich glory.
Great 1990 recording. Do not miss out however on David Measham's LSO version
on Regis. The Tokyo Quartet's recording of the String Quartet is very closely
recorded. It is movingly performed with sustained attention to mood even if
dynamic contrast is compromised. After hearing the Adagio in its original
string quartet garb we get the chance to hear it in familiar orchestral form
with Bernstein drawing a touching charge from this music which has become
a symbol of a serene yet searing melancholy.
CD 2
This disc holds an old friend in the shape of the Violin Concerto from Stern
and Bernstein. I heard another historic version recently - the one on Pristine
from Koussevitsky and Ruth Posselt. It lacked heart and let many of Barber's
most poignant ideas go for little or for far less than they are worth. Typical
is the way the jagged trumpet fanfares in the Andante pass by without due
emphasis by Koussevitsky. They have a real tragic jolt in the Stern version.
Schippers’ 1965 Essay No. 1 sounds really handsome. In fact throughout
this series the often flawed LP sound some of us may remember from CBS and
SBRG days has been largely transformed into something more agreeable, fuller
and natural. Medea's Dance of Vengeance from The Cave of the Heart
is superb. This is classic being symphonically and emotionally weighty. It's
one of the highlights of a very fine collection. Schippers superbly shapes
the extravagant brass climax at 3:48 and 7:56 onwards. Hearing this I lament
that Schippers was not set loose on the Souvenirs ballet suite which
has a similarly tense and saturated climax in the Tango.
Horowitz's possessed recording of the Piano Sonata has never sounded as good.
The hiss has been tamed without palpable damage to the treble.
CD 3
Knoxville is one of the greatest musical works to emerge from the USA.
It really hit home for me when I heard the then rare Eleanor Steber recording
broadcast which was by the BBC circa 1981. This is now much more easily attainable
but the strings sound more shrill than ever. I still rate highly the Australian
Molly McGurk on Regis - originally on Unicorn licensed from the ABC. The most
affecting of all is that from Dawn Upshaw on Nonesuch. Leontyne Price and
that doughty Barber champion Schippers also make a superb fist of it with
reserves of meaning found by Price in the words. She handles the great moving
apex of the child's musing in the backyard with a rare power to touch. Her
breath control when fining away to pianissimo is glorious, glorious, glorious.
The notes are produced with miraculous steadiness. Price's challenge is to
keep that blowsy operatic flamboyance and heaviness at bay. This she does
wonderfully well. Schippers keeps the vulnerable orchestral score under control.
This was made in 1968. Fifteen years before that Price and Barber were recorded
- with a high level of hiss - at the Library of Congress in the moving Hermit
Songs op. 29. The most instantly affecting and witty of these is The
Monk and His Cat. Let's leave the hiss behind with Horne and Katz's galloping
and brusque I hear an army to words by James Joyce. Back to Price -
this time with David Garvey - for Nocturne. There’s something
of Dover Beach here. Horne sings Sure On This Shining Night to words
by James Agee, the same poet who graced Barber's Knoxville.
Back to full orchestra with Frederica Von Stade's slow melancholy Must
the winter come so soon from the opera Vanessa to words by Menotti.
The whole work is now well served by recordings from RCA, Naxos and Chandos.
It’s from a concert performance and comes complete with applause.
From the same Leontyne Price LP we get two extracts from the opera Antony
and Cleopatra. It really should be recorded afresh. I am aware of the
New World set but it seems to have limited retail circulation. The two
extracts given by Price and Schippers give us an exciting insight into what
this derided opera could do if only it were allowed its wingspan and space.
The nonsense surrounding the premiere can now be relegated to irrelevance
and collateral interest. The music explodes with all the composer's old orgasmic
powers. He proves an eloquent Prospero shaken by passions once ancient and
now having youthful life. Give Me some music and Give me my robe.
If Walton's similar Troilus and Cressida was similarly out of its time
and can now be received and recorded then why not this opera also. Chandos,
are you listening? Nearly 20 minutes of music in these two extracts is full
of instrumental detailing and eruptive accelerant. It was audacious of Barber
to bring out such a work in the late 1960s. Price is in spectacular yet humane
voice throughout and Schippers knows how to drawn the finest dynamic gradations
from the NPO.
We end with what is the third version of the Adagio on this set. There's
the String Quartet from the Tokyo, Bernstein's NYPO and finally the so-called
Agnus Dei with Richard Marlow directing the Choir of Trinity College
Cambridge. From them he draws a white purity and altitude similar to the Allegri
Misere. If I have the same misgivings as John Quinn over it being done
a cappella this is the finest version I have heard.
Rob Barnett
TRACKLISTING
CD 1
The School for Scandal, overture for orchestra, Op. 5 7:36
New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Schippers
Dover Beach, for baritone and string quartet, Op. 3 7:52
Samuel Barber (Baritone) Curtis String Quartet
Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 21:39
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin
String Quartet in B major, Op. 11 18:31
Tokyo String Quartet
Adagio for strings (or string quartet; arr. from 2nd mvt. of String Quartet),
Op. 11 9:54
New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein
CD 2
Violin Concerto, Op. 14 22:36
Isaac Stern (Violin), New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein
Second Essay, for orchestra, Op. 17 10:45
New York Philharmonic/Thomas Schippers
Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance (from "Medea"), Op. 23a 12:36
New York Philharmonic/Thomas Schippers
Sonata for piano, Op. 26 18:33
Vladimir Horowitz (Piano)
CD 3
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for high voice and orchestra Op. 24 16:23
Leontyne Price (Soprano), New Philharmonia Orchestra Thomas Schippers
Hermit Songs, for voice & piano, Op. 29 16:22
Leontyne Price (Soprano), Samuel Barber (Piano)
I Hear an Army, song for voice & piano, Op. 10/3 2:28
Marilyn Horne (Mezzo), Martin Katz (Piano)
Nocturne, song for voice & piano Op. 13/4 3:28
David Garvey (Piano), Leontyne Price (Soprano))
Sure on this shining night, song for voice & piano Op. 13/3 2:38
Marilyn Horne (Mezzo), Martin Katz (Piano)
Vanessa, opera, Op. 32 - (Must the Winter Come So Soon?) 3:06
Frederica Von Stade (Mezzo), Members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Steven
Blier (Piano)
Antony and Cleopatra, opera, Op. 40 - (Give Me Some Music) 8:59 (Give Me My
Robe) 9:22
Performers: Leontyne Price (Soprano), New Philharmonia Orchestra (Orchestra)Thomas
Schippers
Agnus Dei, for chorus (arr. from 2nd mvt. of String Quartet), Op. 11
Length: 9:33
Trinity College Choir, Cambridge (Choir, Chorus)