Samuel Barber
             Orchestral Works

* Barber: Adagio for Strings
* Barber: Medea's Dance of Vengeance
* Barber: Overture to The School for Scandal
* Barber: Second Essay for Orchestra
* Barber: Intermezzo from Vanessa
* Barber: Andromache's Farewell*
* Menotti: Overture to Amelia al Ballo**
* Berg: Interlude from Wozzeck**
* d'Indy: Introduction to Fervaal**

Martina Arroyo (soprano)*, New York Philharmonic, Columbia Symphony
Orchestra**/Schippers
Total time: 71'22"
Sony MHK 62837

Summary for the Busy Executive:  A classic of the stereo era.  The best
Adagio on record.

You don't much hear Thomas Schippers's name nowadays, but during the
Sixties you wouldn't have been surprised to learn he had turned into the
Next Lenny.  He made a name for himself mainly in opera, and composers
eagerly wrote works for him.  Barber and Menotti trusted him with
premieres, most visibly the disastrous one of Barber's Antony and
Cleopatra.  The production and the critical mauling it received almost
completely shut down Barber's career and did little for Schippers's as
well.  When Bernstein retired from the New York Philharmonic, Schippers
was passed over and wound up directing the Cincinnati Orchestra.  He died
of cancer at a shockingly young age.

Barber's standing among critics probably reached its low point during
the Sixties and Seventies.  Antony and Cleopatra seemed to give various
writers permission to shout in chorus variations on "the emperor has no
clothes." Barber's career had been one of the most spectacular among
American composers.  Only Copland's equaled it.  Almost everything Barber
wrote entered standard rep, and he almost never had to make do with
second-rank performers.  A list of his first executants includes Toscanini,
Ormandy, Shaw, Martha Graham, Gold & Fizdale, Horowitz, Browning, Eleanor
Steber, Leontyne Price, Rosalind Elias, Biggs, and the U.S.  Air Force.
Ned Rorem, speaking from envy as a songwriter, remarked that Barber had
access to an entirely different (and higher) class of singer than almost
everybody else.  Antony and Cleopatra put paid to that and to a career of
prestige commissions.  When the opera finally received its first recording,
about twenty years later, more than one critic couldn't believe how good
the opera really was.  For my money, it culminates Barber's style - the
most extensive expression and most versatile idiom he ever achieved.  What
had happened all those years ago? I find it unlikely that such a sudden,
eclipse came from solely from the lack of merit in the music.  Furthermore,
the same sort of thing happened to Copland.  Both men's names dropped out
of serious critical discussion.  At any rate, they seem to have returned,
and a good thing, too.  Apparently, the war has ended.

Yet it affected Barber's reputation.  Academia became the great patron
of the avant-garde, but then Barber had never been really solid in the
academy.  Furthermore, since younger composers tended to ignore the
previous generation, postwar academia ignored Barber's music even more.
Performers continued to play Barber, but generally only the pieces from
the Thirties.  The output of his remaining forty years of composing still
lies under a cloud.  The folks who walk out of concerts so they don't have
to listen to a Nielsen symphony found Barber's works too confusing.  The
new-music zealots heard in Barber's music only what was common to everybody
else and missed his individual voice.  They reacted as if someone had tried
to foist on them second-hand Raff.

However, people who "just listen" couldn't get enough of Barber - and still
can't, if sales of the "Adagio" CD (every single arrangement of the Adagio
for Strings) mean anything.  Small labels like Desto, Koch, Louisville,
Cambridge, New World, and MusicMasters kept his output from all periods
before the public.  It has paid off.  Barber's stock has boomed.  Big names
rush to record (and re-record) his work.  For much of his music, you get a
choice of performers.  Even in New Orleans, the classical-music backwater
where I live, he shows up on the local symphony program.  Kiddie violin
virtuosi sail through his concerto, apparently vying with the Mendelssohn
as the first vehicle for fiddle prodigies.  The critical wars of the
Fifties and Sixties have apparently played themselves out.  Most now look
at Barber as they look on any classic - that is, pretty much without extra
baggage.

Of all Barber CDS, this one may very well be my favorite, with superb
performances of both the familiar and the less-known.  If someone has
recorded better readings than this, they've passed me by.  Schippers always
zeroed in on where Barber's emotional payoff could be found, and the New
York Philharmonic - with probable help from the Columbia engineers -
sounded massive and rich, just the sort of sound these pieces cry out for.
Even live, I've never heard the orchestra - or any orchestra, for that
matter - sound that good, but I don't complain, God knows.  Schippers and
the sound combine to allow Barber's music to overwhelm you.  Good taste is
overrated.  Given the musical affinity between Schippers and Barber, I find
it surprising that they never were personally all that close, but it says
a lot for Barber that he wrote Antony and Cleopatra primarily at
Schippers's urging.  "You're a very persuasive young man, Tommy," he
reportedly said.

Medea's Dance of Vengeance began as a ballet, Cave of the Heart, for Martha
Graham.  Like Copland's original Appalachian Spring, the work uses a small
chamber ensemble, practical for a touring troupe, although Barber can make
few sound like many.  The music, however, was bigger than the ensemble, and
Barber began to recast it for symphony orchestra.  He created a Medea
Suite and even made a rare conducting appearance for probably the first
recording.  The suite seldom gets played, and I suspect that Barber
withdrew it.  He kept tinkering and came up with the sequence Medea's Dance
of Vengeance (I believe sometimes billed as Medea's Meditation and Dance of
Vengeance).  The last version seems to receive the most recordings.  All
three versions of the work have been recorded:  Cave of the Heart on Koch,
the suite conducted by Hanson on Mercury, and on the Schippers here.  For
those who think of Barber as a Lovely Tonal Composer, much of this music
will come as a shock, as wayward chromatic lines depict the growth of
Medea's resolve to murder.  Yet even here, Barber comes up with a memorable
genius theme, heard in the opening measures for the winds.  The work begins
quietly, as if parting back the mists of time to mythological Greece.  It
becomes increasingly agitated as it seems to trace Medea's psychological
journey from sorrow at abandonment to vengeance on her husband, Jason,
to her rage as she prepares the horrible act, to her triumph over the
slaughter of their children.  The music unleashes the power of dissonance,
with the genius theme returning at the climaxes.  This is probably Barber's
most advanced score at the time (the Forties), an argument so focused and
full of notes that count for something that his considerable reworking and
reshaping after the ballet's premiere doesn't surprise me.  Schippers and
the New York Phil give a glorious reading - rhythmically stinging where
called for, uneasy, terrifying, and ecstatic.  The final climax, on Medea's
murderous exultation, horrifies and awes at the same time - one of the few
examples of genuine tragic feeling in music, where we find the hero's flaw
inextricable from the hero's greatness.

A stunning Adagio for Strings follows.  For me, each arrangement of
the piece takes on its own character:  an intimacy in the string quartet
version, an almost Old Testament passion in the version for massed strings.
I should say that I don't care for the choral arrangement (an "Agnus Dei")
at all.  The string writing doesn't translate all that well to the voices,
and the words seem stuck on, rather than welded to the musical line.  As
to the string orchestra, the more instruments, the better.  Here, the New
York Philharmonic steals in from nowhere, all those strings melting at the
low dynamic.  The piece consists of several dynamic arches - builds and
fallbacks.  Schippers not only executes the builds well but manages the
tougher diminishing of sound seamlessly.  Furthermore, he leaves the
impression of rising to ever-greater heights.  Just when you think the
strings couldn't possibly give any more, they pile it on.  It's not a
matter of mere loudness, but of intensity as well.  The final peak before
the benedictory closing vibrates through you.  Schippers sails through the
tempo changes effortlessly.  The performance keeps moving inexorably
forward, even when it moves slowly.  This is a spacious, passionate, noble
performance.

The Second Essay, again from the Forties, shows Barber moving from his
lyrical, somewhat narrow idiom to the expanded resource and psychology of
Medea.  Despite its title (and Barber never really was clear about what he
meant by the term "essay"), this movement would have graced any symphony.
Perhaps its non-sonata, bipartite structure made Barber uneasy, but that's
its glory, as far as I'm concerned.  The entire 11-minute work grows out of
the odd little theme heard in the opening measures.  The theme - again, a
memorable one - manages to come across as lyrical, but, when you look at it
closely, it jumps about like a flea on a hot brick.  Barber not only gets
these notes to sing, he harnesses them for a driving fugue and praising
fanfares during the closing aspiring chorale.  Schippers leads the best
recorded account I know.

Barber wrote the Overture to "The School for Scandal" practically
dewy-fresh from his composition lessons at the Curtis Institute.  The
work proclaims a new voice in music, with an individual approach to melody
not heard before.  While I sometimes hear Stravinsky, Brahms, Scalero, and
Chopin in Barber's music, whatever I perceive as the core of it remains
his own.  He also came up with one of the few comic overtures to stand
comparison with Mozart - not only sparkling and tender, but well
worked-through.  Even at this young age, Barber has mastered the
late-Romantic orchestra; he can apply bright colors without
obscuring the lines, and his string-writing (Barber was a pianist and
professional-caliber singer) is amazingly idiomatic besides.  Schippers and
the New York Phil sparkle in the quick sections and sing in the lyrical
ones.  Harold Gomberg's oboe spins out a beautiful long line at the song
theme, and the New York strings somehow manage to raise the emotional
stakes in their answer.  Again, I've not heard a better performance, live
or recorded.

Andromache's Farewell, as Tim Page's liner notes point out, represents
late Barber.  It sets the Greek translation of John Patrick Creagh as a
scena for solo singer.  Sony doesn't provide the text, and Arroyo's diction
is only just intelligible with earphones.  It's a fine work, although not
one you will likely hum.  The work it most easily recalls is Barber's own
Knoxville:  Summer of 1915, but more as contrast.  More dramatic than
lyrical, the themes have become even more angular, with little trace of
the familiar Barber melos.  Like Knoxville, Andromache is a bear to sing,
although for a slightly different reason; it calls on all the vocal stamina
and agility of Knoxville and adds a more unstable and dissonant harmony.
The pitches are harder to hit.  Arroyo has a few intonation problems,
mainly in the quicker passages, but does, all things considered, an heroic
job.  Barber again shows his mettle as a composer who can delineate
shifting moods.  The work runs through agitation, desolation, anger,
tenderness, and rises to a high dramatic nobility at the close.  Arroyo
meets the interpretive challenge, and Schippers and his players contribute
to the unfolding of the drama with alert playing of a difficult score.

The "Intermezzo" from the second act of Barber's opera Vanessa is just
about the only thing that has survived from the opera, despite a successful
first run and a complete recording from RCA.  I've not heard of other
productions or of other recordings.  But the four-minute "Intermezzo"
has received a number of readings.  Vanessa was in fact Barber's first
commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and all his life he wanted a
popular operatic success to match his friend Menotti's.  It didn't happen,
and of the two full-length operas Barber wrote (there's also a chamber
opera, A Hand of Bridge), Vanessa has dated badly, mainly due to its
Menotti libretto - a Chekhovian drama with a dollop of Bergmanian symbolism
tossed in.  How Barber managed to come up with any decent music for the
silly story and pasteboard personae is beyond me.  Nevertheless, the opera
does contain one splendid aria, sung by a minor character (a doctor), who
thereby takes whatever interest we have left in the eponymous heroine.
Barber certainly recognized a good tune when he wrote one and turned it
into this instrumental, so that the audience could hear it twice.  The
tune will stop your heart, it's that beautiful, full of nostalgic regret.

 From the preceding track on, Schippers conducts the "Columbia Symphony
Orchestra," the nom de jeu the Columbia label resorted to when it recorded
pick-up groups or legit orchestras that, for contractual reasons, couldn't
be listed as themselves. These sessions took place in New York, and I
wouldn't doubt that at least some Philharmonic musicians took part,
although I don't know for sure. Even so, the quality of playing dips
slightly, not that anything sounds out-and-out terrible. However, going
from the gorgeous ensemble and tone of the Philharmonic to the Columbia
Symphony is like hitting a speed bump. The selections themselves,
nevertheless, retain considerable interest. The Menotti overture to Amelia
al ballo (Amelia goes to the ball) fizzes like Beaujolais, and somehow the
composer gets trumpets to dance. The entire opera, by the way, is a
delight. Menotti had a great gift for comic opera and provided three of
real wit: Amelia (one of his few works not in English), The Telephone, and
The Old Maid and the Thief.

Excepting Lulu and the violin concerto, I've never been a fan of Berg.
The Sprechstimme of Wozzeck always hits me as corny, and the vocal
stretches seem like so much noodling.  The instrumentals, however,
fascinate, and I marvel that the same composer wrote both.  Schippers turns
in a splendidly passionate account, with the orchestra often rising above
the rough-and-ready to genuine commitment.  In short, they seem to play
better than they really know how.  The disc also introduced me to D'Indy's
Fervaal, or at least this excerpt.  I know nothing about the work.  To me,
it sounds like a cross between Wagner and early Debussy - perhaps part
of the petite Bayreuth that sprang up in France in the late nineteenth
century.  I also wonder about the title, perhaps a bilingual pun:  Verfall,
German for decay or ruin, and Verwahl, German for choice.  The selection
goes along a fairly calm road.  The mostly placid surface poses the danger
of monotony, but Schippers's baton keeps things moving.  This listener, at
any rate, found himself still awake at the end, and slightly surprised over
that.

In terms of sound as well, the Barber LP represented Columbia records
at its finest.  This digital remastering preserves the beauty, while it
eliminates the patina of pops, hisses, and crackles that pitted my vinyl.
Music, performance, and sound - a winner.

Steve Schwartz