Samuel Barber
© HNH Worldwide
There could be few items to rival the recognition of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, be it carried out from the ‘authentic rating’ (it was itself an association of an earlier string quartet motion) or in one of many plentiful preparations of the piece for different forces. Such a stage of recognition, nevertheless, regularly overshadows different equally enticing works inside a composer’s output. Right here, then, is a chronological, career-spanning collection of Barber’s maybe lesser-known orchestral works, to offer context and perhaps a nudge to additional discover his legacy.
Barber (1910–1981) was one of many first college students on the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, the place he studied piano, conducting, singing and composition. He proved an exemplary scholar. His classmates would jokingly check with the ‘Three Bs’ of classical music: Bach, Beethoven and Barber. His comparatively modest catalogue of orchestral works consists of 3 operas, 2 ballets, 2 symphonies and three concertos and, though he did experiment with Twentieth-century compositional methods, his model usually remained anchored in a romantic vein.
Barber made an auspicious debut in 1933 together with his overture The Faculty for Scandal, a glowing evocation of Sheridan’s comedy that gained Columbia College’s Bearns Prize in 1933. Right here’s how the work opens.
The Faculty for Scandal (8.559024)
Arturo Toscanini
Photograph: Tully Potter Assortment
Barber consolidated that success together with his First Symphony, which was given its premiere in 1937 by the Cleveland Orchestra underneath Arthur Rodzinsky. A subsequent efficiency in Salzburg later that 12 months attracted the reward of no much less a determine than Arturo Toscanini, who commissioned Barber to jot down for his newly fashioned NBC Symphony Orchestra. The ensuing Essay for Orchestra, the primary of three such items, premiered in New York in 1938.
The primary a part of the work opens with richly divided strings that generate a somewhat fatalistic temper. This turns into extra impassioned, reaching a quick Copland-like climax earlier than returning to the opening pensive temper.
First Essay for Orchestra (8.559024)
Serge Koussevitzky
Supply: Wikipedia
Barber’s conscription into the US Air Pressure in 1943 led on to the commissioning of his Second Symphony (he was given particular dispensation to compose, at the same time as an active-duty airman). The symphony was first carried out the next 12 months by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Barber revised the work in 1947, however the piece failed to determine itself within the live performance repertory and Barber withdrew it in 1964. Three years later he took the drastic step of destroying the unique rating and a lot of the printed copies. Solely after his loss of life did a duplicate floor, permitting the revival of this, his darkest and tonally most forward-looking of his main works.
Within the phrases of the late conductor Andrew Schenk, who spearheaded the symphony’s revival within the late Eighties: “It evokes the majesty of flight, the fear of battle, the loneliness of the skies at night time, the triumph of victory. Because of this above all, [it] deserves a greater destiny than the oblivion assigned to it by its composer.”
Right here’s an extract from the primary motion.
Second Symphony (8.559024)
From the Fifties, we now have two brief works which may not strictly fall into the orchestral class. The primary is the Intermezzo from Barber’s 1958 opera Vanessa which is heard on the peak of the pathos-ridden motion within the third and last act. The opera tells the story of a girl whose lover returns to her snowy abode after years of absence after which promptly falls in love together with her daughter. The Intermezzo is perhaps taken as an outline of the 2 weeks bridging the previous and following scenes. In context, it depicts Vanessa, the elder, spurned lady; as an orchestral extract, it’s each haunting and lovely, as stunning an orchestral fantasia as Barber ever wrote.
Intermezzo (8.559135)
Gian Carlo Menotti
Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Additionally in 1958, Gian Carlo Menotti, the Italian composer and Barber’s life associate, based the annual Spoleto Competition in his native nation and preferred to current a cabaret-style programme known as Album Leaves, at which artists of various backgrounds introduced brief items (or poems or performs) composed for the event, essentially the most notable of which is Barber’s A Hand of Bridge, a nine-minute witty (and considerably bitchy) ‘opera’ with a libretto by Menotti himself.
Scored for 4 soloists and chamber orchestra, the work is a fast psychodrama, with the 4 characters each enjoying bridge and enjoying out, of their minds, what they consider one another. Barber doesn’t draw back from jazzy swung rhythms or overly psychological music, all demanded by the brief however reducing drama. Right here’s how the piece ends.
A Hand of Bridge (8.559135)
My first decide from Barber’s output within the Sixties, fittingly for the present season, is Die Natali, which was commissioned by the Koussevistky Music Basis and first carried out by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1960. Because the title suggests, the piece attracts on Christmas carols for its thematic concepts, dressing them in ingenious harmonic and contrapuntal units. After the intonations of O come, o come Emmanuel, there’s a set of variations on Lo, how a rose e’er blooming; an look from We Three Kings; variations on God relaxation you merry, gents; a quick pop-up from Good King Wenceslas previous Silent Evening; and, over an ostinato derived from Adeste fideles, the work reaches a end result with Pleasure to the World, earlier than a last reference to Silent Evening.
Our extract picks up on the entry of The Three Kings.
Die Natali (8.559133)
John Browning
Photograph: Tully Potter Assortment
Barber began work on his Piano Concerto the identical 12 months, 1960, and though the primary two actions have been accomplished by the tip of the 12 months, the loss of life of his sister in July 1961 and an invite to attend the Congress of Soviet Composers the next 12 months impeded additional work on the piece. The finale wasn’t accomplished till 9 September 1962, simply in time for the premiere on 24 September! John Browning was the soloist, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed by Eric Leinsdorf. The concerto marks the zenith of Barber’s public acclaim.
Right here’s how the work concludes.
Piano Concerto (8.559133)
Anthony and Cleopatra was Barber’s second opera. Briefly, it was a disaster. Commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan Opera, it was withdrawn after a single efficiency in 1966. Within the years following, Barber was extra of a reluctant composer. He sank right into a despair, into an alcoholic despair, rising solely sporadically to jot down a brand new piece. One in every of these, Fadograph of a Yestern Scene (fadograph/fading {photograph}; yestern/yesterday), borrows a phrase from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, considered one of Barber’s favorite books. The music appears to mirror Debussy greater than his personal earlier works, constructed on gradual, impressionistic washes of sound, with giant forces but a spare texture. The Pittsburgh Symphony commissioned it and gave the primary efficiency in 1971. It was the final orchestral work of any scope Barber would write.
Fadograph of a Yestern Scene (8.559135)
Barber was later identified with most cancers and, whereas succumbing to the sickness, he was attempting to finish a concerto for oboe and orchestra, requested from him by Harold Gomberg, who performed within the New York Philharmonic. Initially Barber envisioned a multi-movement work, however as he knew he wouldn’t stay to complete it, he settled on a single motion, a Canzonetta – and he didn’t fairly stay even to complete this; Charles Turner, Barber’s solely scholar, took up the duty of finishing it. We play out with a efficiency of the work in its entirety.
Canzonetta (8.559135)
“Samuel Barber, the American composer who twice gained the Pulitzer Prize and whose Adagio for Strings grew to become some of the common works within the orchestral repertoire, died yesterday in his Fifth Avenue residence after a protracted sickness. He was 70 years previous.
All through his profession, Samuel Barber was hounded by success. In all probability no different American composer has ever loved such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim.”
The New York Instances
24 January 1981
