Samuel Barber - Violin Concerto, Op. 14
1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Presto in moto

Edgar Meyer – Violin Concerto
4. Movement I
5. Movement II

Hilary Hahn – violin
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Hugh Wolff - conductor

Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto is well-suited to Hilary Hahn’s expressive range and technical proficiency. Perhaps it is also an ideal vehicle for her impressive musicality, which always overrides virtuosic flashiness. Hahn’s seriousness is matched by the work’s earnest style, and her intellectual grasp of the music is as strong as her emotional commitment to it. Hahn opens the neo-Romantic Allegro with a full sound, complemented by the artful writing for winds. Barber’s orchestration is transparent, leaving room for the solo violin to be distinctly heard at all times. The writing in the violin’s low register lets Hahn display her richest tone, though her higher passages are also beautifully colored. The Andante begins with a long oboe solo -- a clear nod to the Brahms Violin Concerto -- its plaintive tone setting the second movement’s darker mood. Hahn’s solo grows out of this opening material and arches above the brooding harmonies, almost rising to an elegiac level. The devilishly difficult Presto in moto is a perfect foil to the melancholy atmosphere of the previous two movements, and Hahn shows genuine skill in her crisp articulation of this scurrying finale. Hugh Wolff and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra provide a lush background, enhancing Hahn’s resonant performance. Through no failing of her own, Hahn's premiere recording of Edgar Meyer’s Violin Concerto is less than satisfying because her performance is stronger than the piece itself, which is at times banal and insufficiently developed to exploit the form’s dramatic potential. The simple melody of the introduction leads to, and ultimately frames, the faster material that follows. Hahn’s high, ringing arabesques and tricky runs, played against the shifting compound meters, are the most attractive features of the movement. Although the accompaniment is rhythmically active, and occasionally interesting, the orchestra never breaks out of its restricted background role. The second movement’s main theme evolves from a trite double-turn, which is passed around the orchestra several times before the soloist’s entrance. Hahn controls her double-voiced passages, carefully maintaining both lines without noticeably breaking. When the music picks up in pace and complexity, the change is welcome. Hahn, held back for too long, finally breaks loose with some colorful playing. The return to the opening material sets up a cadenza, more of a reverie than an overt display of technique. In this performance, Wolff and the orchestra give understated support, perhaps all that can be drawn from Meyer's score. ---Blair Sanderson, Rovi

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1.Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for high voice & orchestra (rev. for voice & chamber orchestra), Op. 24
2.Dover Beach, for baritone (or mezzo-soprano) & string quartet, Op. 3

Hermit Songs, for voice & piano, Op. 29
3. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: I. At Saint Patrick's Purgatory
4. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: II. Church Bell At Night
5. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: III. St. Ita's Vision
6. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: IV. The Heavenly Banquet
7. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: V. The Crucifixion
8. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: VI. Sea-snatch
9. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: VII. Promiscuity
10. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: VIII. The Monk And His Cat
11. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: IX. The Praises of God
12. Hermit Songs, Op. 29: X. The Desire For Hermitage

13.Andromache's Farewell, for soprano & orchestra, Op. 39

Claus Adam (cello)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) [2]
Earl Carlyss (violin)
Eleanor Steber (soprano) [1]
Leontyne Price (soprano) [3-12]
Martina Arroyo (soprano) [13]
Raphael Hillyer (viola)
Samuel Barber (piano)

This exploration of the vocal dimension of Barber's music has been in the Sony catalogue for a decade - quite a survivor!

As Robert Cushman says in his booklet notes, Barber came from a family in which the vocal art was prominent. His aunt was the mezzo Louise Homer (1871-1947). Fischer-Dieskau is a mite mournful but Arnold's Dover Beach is admittedly hardly a bright subject. It would be welcome if some company would record Maurice Johnstone's setting for baritone and orchestra. Has anyone else set the poem?

The Steber Knoxville is a pioneering classic but I prefer Dawn Upshaw's Teldec version. It is a work that easily worms its way into your affections - an operatic scena really and of tellingly balanced emotional symmetry. Leontyne Price and the composer premiered the Hermit Songs in 1953 and made this recording a year later. These are well worth hearing and will appeal if you have taken to Leo Smit's Dickinson songs or Finzi's Hardy or the songs of Herbert Howells. Price is very clear and I defy you not to be won over in The Monk and his Cat which lilts along with a Caribbean smile. The settings are of Irish texts from the 8th to 13th centuries as translated and adapted by Auden, Chester Kallman, Howard Mumford Jones and Sean O'Faolain.

After such intimacy the hot up-blast of the orchestra in the scena Andromache's Farewell comes as a voltage jolt to the listener. There is an asperity and astringency about the music in which Barber quarter opens the door to dissonance. Arroyo is in fully blooming operatic voice and there can be no doubting that this is music for a grand auditorium. Andromache already bereft of her husband, Hector (her parting from Hector is charted by Bliss in Morning Heroes). Here she bids farewell to her son Astyanax who is to be executed by the Greeks. The music has that same tenderness, that same turbulence and ambition that is to be heard in Barber's own Antony and Cleopatra and Walton's Troilus and Cressida. Did Barber ever contemplate setting Euripides Trojan Women - a subject that was set by Cecil Gray - another of the great unknowns. A pity that the engineers pull back on the controls at 9.13 just as Arroyo reaches a glorious climax. Still these are all analogue AAD originals and tape saturation had to be managed. You have to hear this: Schippers with all his considerable operatic cunning and the NYPO at his bidding make a great collaboration.

The playing time is short, regrettably. Interpretive values are high and Barber enthusiasts must have this. Sadly no texts are provided although all singer enunciate with care without being mannered.

A disc made memorable by Arroyo and Steber and by Price's faithful clarity, restraint and grip on the intimacy of her songs. ---Rob Barnett, musicweb-international.com

This is an indispensable issue for anyone who values Barber as a composer. I tend to think of him as among the second rank of American composers, after Copland, Roy Harris, Gershwin and one or two others, but that's no disgrace. None of them wrote anything quite as beautiful as "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," and here it receives a performance by the artist who commissioned the piece, Eleanor Steber, when her voice was probably at its peak. The 1950 recording has plenty of presence, and her phrasing and her attack on the difficult high writing are something to hear. Compare her in this music with a very fine singer like Dawn Upshaw and you realize that Steber was a very great singer indeed -- the best American soprano between Ponselle and Leontyne Price. And speaking of Price, here she is accompanied by Barber in 1954, in his charming "Hermit Songs" -- miniatures really, based on translations of medieval Irish poetry. This is Price who by the end of that decade would be the premiere Verdi soprano of her time. Here the voice is light, pure, and yet, one senses, with plenty in reserve. Another distinguished American soprano, Martina Arroyo, gives an impassioned account of the dramatic scena "Andromache's Farewell," based on a scene from a play by Euripides in which Andromache, the widow of Hector, addresses her son who will soon be killed by the Greeks. It's the most conservative music on this disc, and Arroyo brings great force and tenderness to it. Arroyo pursued her career in Price's shadow, but she deserves mention in the same breath. (Her Leonora in a 1970 recording of Verdi's "Forza" is every bit as good as Price's recording of the role with Levine).

Finally, there's a remarkable setting of "Dover Beach," compellingly sung by Fischer-Dieskau in impeccable German-accented English in a 1967 recording when F-D's voice was in great condition. It's a setting for voice and string quartet (here the Juilliard Quartet) and Matthew Arnold's uneven-lengthed lines are set in an almost melismatic manner, as striking in its way as the more direct lyricism of the setting of Agee's prose in "Knoxville." The Juilliard Quartet play beautifully, and Fischer-Dieskau, recorded a little more closely than ideal, sings with great beauty and feeling. So . . . not just lovers of Barber but lovers of great singing and great voices should look out for this. --- Stanley Crowe, amazon.ca

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Samuel Barber
1   Adagio for Strings 	
2   Violin Concerto, Op. 14: I. Allegro 	 
3   Violin Concerto, Op. 14: II. Andante 	 
4   Violin Concerto, Op. 14: III. Presto in moto 	 
William Schuman
5   To Thee Old Cause (Evocation for Oboe, Brass, Timpani, Piano and Strings) 	
6   In Praise of Shahn (Canticle for Orchestra): Vigoroso 	
7   In Praise of Shahn (Canticle for Orchestra): Lento (bar 185) 	
Charles Ives
8   The Unanswered Question for Trumpet, Flute Quartet and Strings 	
Aaron Copeland
9   Symphony No. 3: Fanfare for the Common Man

Isaac Stern (violin)
New York Philharmonic
Leonard Bernstein – conductor

This recent Sony reissue of the music of American composers Samuel Barber and William Schuman is exactly the same as a CD featured in the "Bernstein Century" series. Included here are Leonard Bernstein and the NYPO's 1971 account of the "Adagio for Strings," 1964 recording of Barber's Violin Concerto, 1968 performance of Schuman's "To Thee Old Cause," and "In Praise of Shahn" from 1970. The music is terrific, but my reason for rewarding only four stars (other than being annoyed at Sony for investing so much energy in a straight reissue with new packaging when so many other classic recordings remain unissued) is this release is obviously aimed at casual fans looking for a good performance of the "Adagio." And boy will they be surprised by the dissonance of the Schuman pieces! This is another Sony reissue that leaves me scratching my head. --- Michael B. Richman, amazon.com

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Barber -  Concerto for Violin & Orchestra 
1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante
3. Presto in moto perpetuo

Delius - Violin Concerto
4. Violin concerto
- With moderate tempo - maestoso - allegretto

Robert Gerle - violin
Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Robert Zeller - conductor

rec Mozart Hall, Vienna in June 1963

Although he is largely forgotten today, violinist Robert Gerle made several LPs for Westminster in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the concertos that he recorded for that label, other than the two reissued here, include those by Vivaldi, Vieuxtemps, Hindemith, and Weill. There also was a set of Beethoven sonatas in which he was partnered by his second wife, Marilyn Neeley. Very little of his discography has been reissued on CD, so this release will be welcomed by violin junkies, particularly because I think this Delius and Barber coupling (originally Westminster WST17045) was his most popular album. The Barber originally was on the first side, and the Delius on the second. Here, the order has been reversed, which makes sense to me, because Delius's concerto ends gently, and Barber's ends with a tart flash of virtuosity.

Gerle was born in 1924 to Hungarian parents, and he received his musical training in that country, although his country of birth was Italy, in a region now under the control of Croatia. The most famous Gerle anecdote concerns his near-execution in the latter days of World War Two. He had escaped from a labor camp outside of Budapest and was hiding out with two dozen other Jews when he was discovered by Russian troops, who were convinced that Gerle was a sniper. As they marched him and his fellows out to be shot, Gerle took his violin with him. A Russian soldier noticed this and asked him to play something by Tchaikovsky. Gerle obliged, and acting on the logic that someone who played the violin couldn't possibly be a sniper, the Russians set Gerle and the other men free.

Gerle arrived in the United States in 1950. In addition to concertizing, he held a variety of teaching positions in the New York and Baltimore areas, and he also wrote two books on violin technique. He died in 2005 after struggling with Parkinson's disease.

In 1958, New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg reviewed Gerle's Town Hall concert and wrote that the violinist's intonation was "flawless." You can judge for yourself on this CD-R. To my ears, this is indeed beautiful violin playing – "sweet" is the word that comes to mind, actually. I think Gerle (and conductor Zeller) could have done more to give direction to Delius's Violin Concerto, which is, even under the best of conditions (Yehudi Menuhin with conductor Meredith Davies, for example), a rather distended work. Gerle makes many a gorgeous sound here, but the concerto's totality is not realized. Barber's concerto is a much stronger work, and here Gerle seems to be in his element, from the long, singing lines in the first two movements to the mad dash of the third. Unfortunately, the Vienna State Opera Orchestra sounds more under-rehearsed here than in the Delius, so this is almost exclusively Gerle's show. Despite my reservations, I was pleased to make his acquaintance!

No miracles have been achieved with the sound, which is adequate. Some low-level noise betrays the LP origins, particularly in the Delius. This is a limited edition release, so don't delay if you're interested. ReDiscovery (www.rediscovery.us) is asking $12 for it – that includes shipping costs – which is $3 cheaper than most of the CD-R releases. I am guessing the relatively shortness of the program was a factor. --- Raymond Tuttle, classical.net

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CD1
1. Act I, Prologue 	1:55 
2. Act I, Scene 1 	2:49 
3. "I am sick and sullen" 	3:25 
4. Act I, Orchestral Interlude 	1:31 
5. Act I, Scene 2 	5:29 	
6. Act I, Scene 3 	5:50 	
7. Slaves' dance 	7:30 	
8. Act I, Scene 4 	3:30 	
9. Aria - "When first she met Mark Antony" 	2:32 
10. Vision of Cleopatra's barge 	3:16
11. Act II, Scene 1 	2:41 	
12. Act II, Scene 2 	2:53 	
13. "Hush, here comes The Queen and Antony" 	4:24 
14. Act II, Scene 3 	3:57 	
15. Act II, Scene 4 	1:32 	
16. Duet - "Oh take, oh take those lips away" 	4:53 		play	

CD2
1. Act II, Scene 5 	3:33 
2. Aria - "Hark! The land bids me tread no more upon it" 	3:24 
3. Act II, Scene 6 	4:29 	
4. Act II, Scene 7 	1:46 	
5. Aria - "O sov'reign mistress" 	3:03 
6. Act II, Orchestral Interlude 	1:26 
7. Act II, Scene 8 	4:55 	
8. "Where's Antony?" 	2:36 	
9. Act III, Scene 1 	6:41 	
10. Trio - "My lord, my lord! Noblest of men" 	5:32 
11. "The breaking of so great a thing" 	2:52 
12. Act III, Prelude 	2:18 	
13. Act III, Scene 2 	3:28 	
14. "Here is a rural fellow" 	2:12 	
15. Aria - "Give me my robe" 	5:33 					play
16. Death of Cleopatra 	4:23

Cleopatra - Esther Hinds
Antonius - Jeffrey Wells
Enobarbus - Eric Halfvarson
Agrippa - C. Damsel
Charmian - Kathryn Cowsdrick
Iras - Jane Bunnell

Spoleto Festival Orchestra
Westminster Choir
Christian Badea - conductor, 1983

Densely opulent, hypocaust hot and smokingly romantic.

The shadows cast by the failure of Antony and Cleopatra at its premiere at the newly-opened Lincoln Centre are long and debilitating. While the opera Vanessa has now had three commercial recordings - all on CD - his most voluptuously grand operatic example has endured comparative neglect.

When Slatkin was with the BBCSO – not the orchestra’s finest moment, I confess - he did great work in introducing British audiences to the delights of the USA’s concert life of the era 1930-1960. The Chandos Barbican Centre recording of Vanessa which Slatkin directed was rightly well received (CHSA5032) as was the Naxos competition that came out at the same time. Few mentioned the torridly recorded RCA-BMG-Sony original of Vanessa by Mitropoulos (Sony Opera House 88697446172).

I first heard something beyond the Leontyne Price excerpts from Antony and Cleopatra in the early 1980s when I exchanged the equivalent of “food parcels” of off-air tapes with like-minded North Americans. My education galloped forwards. Included in the bundles of cassettes were two of the 1975 Juilliard revival of Antony and Cleopatra, again with Esther Hinds; this time with James Conlon conducting. I was captivated. After that I heard a similarly fine and vigorous Antony and Cleopatra from ORTF forces conducted by Jean-Pierre Marty. French radio are good with neglected operas – witness their recent revival of Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights as Les Hauts de Hurlevent.

This long-established New World set from Badea starts with the gathered chorus warning Antony to cease his dalliance with the Egyptian queen. The music and choral writing is densely opulent, hypocaust hot and smokingly romantic. This carries over into the sable afflatus of the ecstatic hymn to Cleopatra’s beauty. One or two of the female cast suffer from a disfiguring vibrato but Hinds is excellent throughout no doubt taking some advantage from her previous performances leading the 1970s Juilliard revival. The Westminster Choir have been superbly drilled but not so much as to lose resilience. The words emerge with superb unanimity – quite an achievement for such a large chorus. The orchestral interlude (tr. 4) sports superheated writing for the massed strings and overtones of Bernard Herrmann and even Rozsa. Scene 2 shifts to the Senate in Rome with ragged-edged trumpet fanfares blaring in barbaric splendour. That trumpet motif with its propulsive echoes of Roy Harris will return. The senator Maecenas sports a true Puccinian squilla. As we move back to Cleopatra’s palace the writing becomes more subtly exotic for the first time with shimmering tintinnabulation. There are times when one thinks that this might have been the roman opera that Rozsa never wrote or that it in some way shadows the parody opera Herrmann wrote for Kane’s wife in Citizen Kane. Note the gleaming strings in Good Night Dear Lady. The final section of act 1 takes us to Cleopatra’s barge on the Nile – it conjures visions of triremes and quinquiremes with the sort of lavish grandiloquence found in Respighi’s Vetrate di Chiesa. Act II opens with that punchy Roy Harris motif for brass and the music ascends to even greater romantic heights. The throb in Hinds’ soprano adds to the eruptive overflow in the duet at tr. 16. It comes as no surprise that Hinds has also performed Barber’s Knoxville – one of the greatest classical works produced in the USA.

We move to CD 2 for the continuation of Act II. The brief orchestral interlude (tr. 6) is distinguished by lovely undramatic lyrical horn playing. The finale of act II has a doom-laden drum limning in the rhythmic pattern of the melody and providing a deep foundation for the music. Magnificently distraught tragedy lours over the latter sections of Act II and all of Act 3. A pyre of the emotions, the music proceeds intensely but with a flame that is slow to consume. It’s the equivalent in sound of Peter O’Toole, in the film Troy, as the Trojan monarch looking out in despair over his city as it is despoiled and put to rape and the torch by the Greeks. That same boiling tragedy wells up in silvery passion in the two voices at tr. 9. Barber does well to sustain the mood over such a long span. It still has wings when we get to Give me my robe (tr. 15) as the harpist bard accompanies the curling smoke of a cremation of the vanities, unbearably sorrowing and with a tragic freight.

The present New World recording has been around for many years and indeed was first issued as an LP box. It’s the only recording of Antony and Cleopatra but is much better than adequate. It was good to make its super-heated acquaintance again. Even so this is not the full opera – it was seemingly cut by about an hour for the Spoleto project. There’s a full libretto and extensive notes including several photos and one of Christian Badea with his film-star looks in conversation with Barber.

The recording forms part of the Recorded Anthology of American Music. This lends it the gravitas of previous such projects including those LPs (some reissued by Bridge) of the Society for the Promotion of the American Musical Heritage. It was taped from four performances. You can hear the occasional cough but it’s rare enough and you certainly tap in to the tension of a live event. And now how about New World recording Roger Sessions’ opera Montezuma, the grand operas of Barber's life-partner Menotti (I am intrigued by The Hero) and Bernard Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights. -- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Antony and Cleopatra is an opera in three acts by American composer Samuel Barber. The libretto was prepared by Franco Zeffirelli based on the play Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare. It originally made use of Shakespeare's language exclusively.

It was first performed in New York City on September 16, 1966, at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The idea was to have a new opera by an American composer for the gala opening of the new house.[vague]

No expense was spared. Franco Zeffirelli was hired as stage director. Thomas Schippers was the conductor. The stage design and costumes were elaborate; the cast enormous including 22 singers, full chorus, and ballet dancers. The opera was badly received by the press, and not enthusiastically received by the public (Freeman 1997, 15; Heyman 1992b). This was because of the elaborate staging, gaudy costumes, and to a press focused more on the social glitter of the occasion than on the music (Heyman 1992a). The opera was dropped from the Met's repertory after the initial performances of the production.

Barber revised the opera, with text revisions by Gian-Carlo Menotti, Barber's long-time partner and librettist of his first opera, Vanessa (Heyman 1992a). This version was premièred under Menotti's direction at the Juilliard American Opera Center on February 6, 1975 (Freeman 1997, 15). There were further productions at the Spoleto Festival USA and Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, in 1983, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1991 (Heyman 1992a).

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1. Piano Sonata, Op. 26: I. Allegro energico	6:30
2. Piano Sonata, Op. 26: II. Allegro vivace e leggiero	1:51
3. Piano Sonata, Op. 26: III. Adagio mesto	5:20
4. Piano Sonata, Op. 26: IV. Fuga: Allegro con spirito	4:38
5. Excursions, Op. 20: I. Un poco allegro	3:03
6. Excursions, Op. 20: II. In slow blues tempo	5:26
7. Excursions, Op. 20: III. Allegretto	3:35
8. Excursions, Op. 20: IV. Allegro molto	2:49
9. Nocturne (Homage to John Field), Op. 33	4:03		play
10. 3 Sketches: No. 1. Love Song: Tempo di valse - Allegretto	0:49
11. 3 Sketches: No. 2. To my Steinway (To No. 220601): Adagio	1:01
12. 3 Sketches: No. 3. Minuet: Tempo di minuetto	1:17
13. 2 Interludes: 2 Interludes: No. 1. Adagio, ma non troppo, "Adagio for Jeanne"	6:25
14. Ballade, Op. 46: Restless	6:03
15. Souvenirs, Op. 28: I. Waltz: Tempo do valse - Allegro con brio	4:05	play
16. Souvenirs, Op. 28: II. Scottische: Tempo di Schottische, Allegro ma non troppo	2:24
17. Souvenirs, Op. 28: III. Pas de deux: Adagio	4:00
18. Souvenirs, Op. 28: IV. Two-Step: Allegro molto	1:56
19. Souvenirs, Op. 28: V. Hesitation Tango: Con moto	3:45
20. Souvenirs, Op. 28: VI. Galop: Allegro molto	3:02

Daniel Pollack – piano

Daniel Pollack has a special relationship to this music. He premiered Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata in the Soviet Union, and played it to wildly enthusiastic acclaim during the 1958 Tschaikovsky competition. That was the year Cliburn took the Gold medal, but Pollack was also a winner, and was very well received. I am very familiar with the Sonata. I performed it at my senior piano recital in college. I also had the pleasure of playing most of the Sonata for Daniel Pollack when I competed in a college-based piano competition. It was a special pleasure for me to learn how intimately he knows this piece. Pollack plays the Sonata with tremendous energy, brilliance and passion. The recorded sound of this Naxos CD is bright and a little too resonant for my taste. Still, the performance is thoroughly exciting, sometimes to the point of being overwhelmingly powerful (for example, at the end of the fugue). I own eleven recordings of the Barber Piano Sonata on CD or LP. Although Pollack's is not my first choice, his playing is so exciting and powerful that I regard his performance as special and worth having. My favorites are Cliburn and Horowitz. My other recordings include Garrick Ohlsson, Willis Deloney, two by John Browning, Leo McCawley, Earl Wild, Peter Lawson and Ruth Laredo. It would be difficult to rank these performances, as they all have something special to commend them. Pollack's passion and abandon stand out in this group. The other Barber works are less familiar to me, and so I am less able to comment on them. They seem beautifully played and, again, only hampered a little by the overly resonant sound. ---Robert L. Berkowitz

Samuel Barber's(1910 --1981) music is lyrical, romantic, and accessible. But his music still manages to be challenging. As is the case with many American composers, Barber tried to develop an American voice by combining art music with American themes derived from jazz and American popular culture. Again, Barber wrote in an accessible way using sophisticated 20th century compositional techniques. Although he did not compose a great deal of music for solo piano, much of what Barber did write is outstanding. This disc on the budget-priced Naxos label includes all of Barber's published solo piano music performed by Daniel Pollack. Pollack knows and plays this music well indeed. He performed Barber's piano sonata at the First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958. The CD includes detailed, insightful liner notes by Victor and Marina Ledin. Barber's piano sonata op 26 (1946) is the highlight of this disc and is a work that has become an important part of the piano repertory. The work is in four movements, and in it Barber uses an expansive musical vocabulary which includes serial composition. The work is romantic and virtuosic and immediately appealing. Vladimir Horowitz championed this music and it has been recorded many times. The sonata opens with a two-note falling figure with the second note heavily accented that becomes the basis for the opening allegro movement. Throughout the first movement, loud, virtuosic passages alternate with quieter sections, with feathery piano writing in the instrument's high register. The two-note figure is prominent at the end of the movement with a shift in accent to the first note of the pair. The second movement is a short, light scherzo which picks up on the quieter portions of the first movement. The third movement, an adagio, is spare and minimalist. It rises to a large climax before the music falls away pensively over a walking bass. The last movement is a fugue which begins rapidly and quickly develops to a frenzied, cataclysmic conclusion. The other extended works on this CD are two piano suites. The first suite, "Excursions" Op. 20 (1942-1944) was also championed by Horowitz. It consists of four movements based upon American jazz and popular song. The first movement features a syncopated theme with repeated notes over a boogie-woogie theme in the bass. The second movemement develops as a blues, with a slow-drag theme that becomes more prominent as the movement progresses. It reminded me of a Gershwin piano prelude. The third movement consists of a lyrical, rippling theme in a moderate tempo which undergoes brief variations. The final movement is a foot-stomping barn dance. The movement reminded me of a conservative Charles Ives. The other suite in this collection is titled "Souvenirs", op 28 (1951-1952) It consists of six short dance movements. (Barber used it for a ballet.) I loved this piece. It is deliberately anachronistic in character and is a throw-back to a hotel-style elegance just before WW I. In listening to this suite, I tried to think of the tone it intended to convey. Some people find this music light and frivolus while others find it ironic. I heard it as loving, but detached and a bit distant. Barber is trying deliberately to recreate a musical experience in an idiom that is no longer his. I think the tone is affectionate, with the music played straight (rather than satirically), but with a distinct feeling of looking back. Thus the title, "Souvenirs". There are a number of short pieces on this CD including three sketches dating from Barber's 13th year. I enjoyed the Nocturne which is highly chromatic (op. 33) and the late Ballade, Op. 46 among these short works. This disc is part of the Naxos "American Classics" series. It will allow the listener to get to know some great works of 20th century American piano music. ---Robin Friedman

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CD1
1. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Potage crème aux perles 		play
2. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: No, I cannot understand 
3. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Must the winter come so soon? 
4. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Listen!...They are here... 	
5. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Do not utter a word, Anatol 
6. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Yes, I believe I shall love you 	
7. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act I: Who are you? 	
8. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: And then? - He Made me drink 
9. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: No, you are not as good a skater 	
10. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: 'Under the willow tree...' 
11. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: Erika, I am so happy 	
12. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: Our arms entwined 	
13. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: Did you hear her? 	
14. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: Outside this house the world has changed 
15. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act II: Orchestral Interlude - Hymn

CD 2
1. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act III: The Count and Countess d'Albany 
2. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act III: I should never have been a doctor 
3. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act III: Here you are! 
4. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act III: At last I found you 	
5. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act III: Nothing to worry about 	
6. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Why did no one warn me? 	
7. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Why must the greatest sorrows 	
8. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: There, look! 	
9. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Anatol, tell me the truth! 
10. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Take me away 	
11. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Grandmother! - Yes, Erika 	
12. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 1: Intermezzo 	
13. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 2: By the time we arrive 
14. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 2: And you, my friend 
15. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 2: To leave, to break (Quintet) 
16. Vanessa, opera, Op. 32: Act IV, Scene 2: Goodbye, Erika		play

Vanessa - Eleanor Steber
Erika - Rosalind Elias
Old Baroness - Regina Resnik
Anatol - Nicolai Gedda
Old Doctor - Giorgio Tozzi
Nicolas - George Cehanovsky
Footman - Robert Nagy

Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra
Dimitri Mitropoulos, 1958

This may be one of the greatest American operas of all time. It is shocking that a work of this quality isn't more widely performed. It is a vocal showcase.

Vanessa suffers perhaps from a bit overwrought libretto. Menotti is guilty of his usual excesses. But Barber more than makes up for this in the sweep of his melodies. Musically, the piece is tonal, but harmonically adventureous. Interestingly, some of the piece calls to mind composers such as Bernard Herrmann or Miklas Rosza...high praise indeed for dramatic music in my mind. The final quintet at the end of the fourth act is rapturous. I find myself listening to it again and again.

The performance is as close to perfect as a composer could wish for. Steber is brilliant as Vanessa and Rosalind Elias is a moving Ericka. Mitropoulos conducts with sweep and power. I wish opera companies would revive this work. It really deserves it. ---Christopher Forbes

There are only a few of what I would call "perfect" opera recordings. I can happily add Barber's Vanessa to that list. Steber's performance leaves one shaking one's head wondering why she hadn't made more recordings. Hers is that rare combination of pure beauty of tone, perfect technique, dramatic flair, unfailing musicianship, power, and range. Why do we have so little of her on disc? She gives the performance of a lifetime as the title role. That isn't to say the rest of the cast isn't on the same level. Amazingly, Rosalind Elias as Erika almost steals the scenes away from Steber. Her mezzo is rich yet youthful sounding, dramatically and musically as fresh as Steber. The two together is magic. Gedda impresses as Anatol, his English pronunciation is superb. Tozzi is in glorious voice and delivers with relish. That leaves Mitropoulos to conduct with brilliance, savoring Barber's bejewelled score with every stroke of his baton. It's a wonderful score, brilliantly written.

The libretto is a bit too kitschy, but no more than any Verdi opera. The sound, even from the 1950's, is clear and fresh, putting some "modern" recordings to shame. I would get this set while it's still available. There is no wonder why it was only recorded once--there's no reason to record it again. ---Daniel Mitrano

Vanessa is an opera in three (originally four) acts by Samuel Barber with an original English libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was composed in 1956–1957 and was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 15, 1958 under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos in a production designed by Cecil Beaton and directed by Menotti. Barber revised the opera in 1964, reducing the four acts to the three-act version most commonly performed today.

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