Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915

Samuel Barber (Composer), Marin Alsop (Conductor), Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Orchestra), Thomas Trotter (Performer), Karina Gauvin (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Thomas Trotter, Karina Gauvin
• Orchestra: Royal Scottish National Orchestra
• Conductor: Marin Alsop
• Composer: Samuel Barber
• Audio CD (May 18, 2004)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos American
• ASIN: B0001N9ZF2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #193,508 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

This fifth installment in Naxos’s Barber series is conducted by 2003 Gramophone Artist of the Year Marin Alsop. This disc features the richly romantic Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a ‘lyric rhapsody’ for soprano and orchestra, sung by Karina Gauvin, who has rapidly established a reputation for excellence internationally. Her charismatic performances fuse a brilliant voice, with an elegant style, and masterful interpretation. The Second Essay for Orchestra is widely regarded as the tightest, most incisive of the three compositions bearing this title; some even consider it a single movement symphony more than an essay—it is densely packed, and more happens in its scant ten minutes than in some works which sprawl for half an hour. The rarely-recorded Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra which, with its fast, furious opening fanfare and virtuosic cadenza, is a veritable tour deforce for the soloist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb 'Knoxville' and Some Rarely Heard Barber Scores, May 19, 2004

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J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915 (Audio CD)

Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra have proven credentials in the music of Barber. They have already recorded the symphonies, the concerti, the First Essay, the 'School for Scandal' Overture and more. Here they continue what appears to be part of what may become a complete traversal of Barber's orchestral scores with competitive recordings of the Second and Third Essays for Orchestra, the grand Toccata Festiva (with Thomas Trotter, organ) and, best of all, a simply splendid 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915' with Canadian soprano, Karina Gauvin.

'Knoxville' is a work that never fails to speak to me. It somehow prompts a nostalgia for a past that I did not actually experience but which feels utterly accurate in its evocation of those long-ago days when people sat on their porch swings 'rocking gently and talking gently' that it still, after many years' familiarity, brings a lump to my throat. Of course, James Agee's prose poem about those times is an American classic. I've known this piece ever since the original recording by its dedicatee, the inimitable American soprano Eleanor Steber. Steber had long been a friend of Barber's and later premièred the name role in his great opera 'Vanessa.' Her performance, for me, is without parallel and it is still available on CD. However, Steber's voice is a big one, a dramatic one (as was Leontyne Price's; she made the second recording of the piece) and 'Knoxville' can also be very effective when sung by a soprano with a more lyrical sound. In that category would be the recordings of Sylvia McNair (what a glorious voice she has!) and Dawn Upshaw. Gauvin's voice is more like Upshaw's and although I presume she is a native French speaker (she's from Montréal), her diction is better. Alsop's musical direction is spot on and the RSNO plays beautifully for her. This is definitely a competitive recording of this great piece. [Sidebar: Renée Fleming's performance of 'Knoxville' at the concert a few years ago to dedicate the new Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival has achieved legendary status. When is SHE going to record it?]

The Second and Third Essays for Orchestra came after his 1930s favorite, the First Essay. The Second, written at the request of Bruno Walter, was premièred by Walter and the New York Philharmonic in 1942. It is the most dramatic and tightly constructed of the three. It is given an incisive performance here. The Third Essay was a late work, premièred in 1976 by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It is less overtly Romantic than the earlier pieces, opening with unaccompanied timpani and xylophone whose asymmetric melodies and rhythms supply motifs for the rest of the work. It is the least played of the three but would be an effective concert opener and is given an effective reading here.

The 'Toccata Festiva' was also premièred by Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was commissioned by a Philadelphia heiress to inaugurate a new pipe organ. The writing for the organ is virtuosic, displaying all facets of an organist's technique. The acclaimed English organist, Thomas Trotter, here plays the solo part with élan and the imaginative orchestral accompaniment is expertly managed by the RSNO. This piece is rarely heard for some reason but I well remember one live performance about ten years ago that had me wondering why; perhaps its because of the heavy requirements placed on the organist's hands (and feet - there is one unaccompanied passage for pedals alone that makes one gasp). It's a barn-burner and a sure crowd pleaser that does not pander to vulgar tastes.

This is an worthy continuation of this worthy series. Recommended.

TT=56:55

Scott Morrison

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Disc, June 17, 2004

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D. A Wend (Arlington Heights, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915 (Audio CD)

Once again, Naxos has come up with a superb disc in their Samuel Barber series. I have heard several recordings of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and this new one succeeds perfectly in capturing the lyricism and mood of the music. The soprano, Karina Gauvin, sings with great feeling, capturing every nuance of James Agee's words. Her voice reminds me of Eleanor Steber, who commissioned this piece, and with the beautiful singing and orchestral playing, this recording of Knoxville is one of the best available. For me, however, the very best Knoxville remains the Leontyne Price recording with Thomas Schippers. There is a hard-to-define quality in Ms. Price's voice that conveys the feeling that she has lived what she is singing about.

This CD also holds the Second and Third Essay for Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra beautifully plays both. The Second Essay was commissioned by Bruno Walter in 1942 and is, like his First Symphony, a compact work with enough musical ideas for a longer work. It is good to see the Third Essay, the least recorded of this form, coupled with the Second. The Third Essay, from 1976, is dominated by the opening theme imaginatively scored for percussion instruments. Like the earlier Essays, the third has an abundance of musical ides and moments of beautiful lyricism with an underlying melancholia. An even rarer work of Barber's in the Toccata Festiva for orchestra and organ, written when Mary Zimbalist, a wealthy patron of music, offered to buy a new pipe organ for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Barber was offered a commission by Eugene Ormandy for the Toccata. The work is a miniature concerto for organ with virtuoso playing required from the soloist. The orchestra has a magnificent accompanying role with music written not as a backdrop for the organ but with beautiful long passages that make it a partner in the performance.

This is a very rewarding disc wonderfully conducted by Marin Alsop, who has become the leading Barber proponent with this 5th disc of his music.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Naxos series of Barber recordings continues virtuously, December 5, 2004

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Dan Fee "music fan aka drdanfee" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915 (Audio CD)

The idea of virtue, connoting an active quality of goodness, might seem oblique in connection with a music recording; but something very like virtue gathers as this regular, 16-bit CD spins merrily in my upsampled player.

Kudos to Ms. Galvin, a Canadian soprano of some reputation. I am sorry to say that I found her earlier recordings very fine, but less than consistent. One track seemed compelling to me, followed by a track or two that seemed competent and not much more. In this case of Barber's Knoxville, all hesitations and doubts must simply dissolve in the face of her superb vocalism, matched effortlessly to Barber's rather mystical setting of the famous Agee text. While the words tell us of a long-faded American tapestry of extended family, timeless childhood being, and the passing parade of changing civilization in the early twentieth century; Barber's genius is that he has the music make clear to us that this snapshot captures its time and place as variants of a universal human condition. I am reminded of the character's return to life's moments after having first settled into the empty grave's chairs playwright Thornton Wilder puts on one side of the stage, across from passing life as we typically live through it. It's all happening too fast, the character exclaims, bringing home to us the ineffable poignancy of our having lived so much that we cannot capture the first time around, nor recapture in memory or nostalgia or recollection. This music is dangerous repertoire, insofar as it asks us as audience members to remember that we do not live so long, nor so fully on this earth, regardless of how many years we do live. In less than expert hands, this piece can turn pale and maudlin, rather than - as here sung by Ms. Gauvin - poised and elegant and wise with melancholy acceptance.
Based on this CD, it is safe to conclude that Ms. Gauvin has matured into consistency of being in command of her considerable resources.

The remainder of the CD only makes inescapably clear how well the entire series is being steered and helmed by Marin Alsop. Typically, she has been offered the Bournemouth Symphony in England, by an orchestra administration who surely know a gifted conductor when they hear one, even if she is a woman. Thank you, Antonia Brico. (First woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, among other things, in 1930's.) The late Walter Legge is supposed to have said that he knew he was hearing a great conductor when somebody could take a sixth rate orchestra and get them to play like a second rate band.

So far, none of the orchestras that have been privileged to play under Marin Alsop have been in the world's famous top ten; but when you hear these performances, you find yourself thinking that maybe a whole lot of very fine music is going on the world, aside from marketing cache or brand-name recognition. The Scottish RNO has been a good orchestra for some time now; so the Barber series has been continuing at a very high level, indeed, especially when you consider that Naxos is a budget label by design. Here we have absolutely nothing of the old 101 strings; or the east European radio orchestra scratch.

One is grateful to the series, if for nothing else than so eloquently demonstrating to us that there is more to the music of Samuel Barber than his reputation as a slightly dotty old-uncle of a past American master allows. To classify him as an American romantic composer is fine, so long as you know the difference between sappy-fizzy romantic bar drinks with parasols from Taiwan on top; and something else in American music which seems to be aging into a liquored-up strong finish with a rich, complex bouquet. Barber's harmonic and narrative directness capture something that we have come to recognize as a definitive dimension of our national identity in music. But the lyricism and the harmony are not sugar-intensive, in these performances. (Just right, this disc.)

Marin Alsop and the RNSO reminds us in the second and third essays for orchestra that Barber could and often did say more in ten or fifteen minutes, than some blustery composers seem to say in thirty or forty-five. There is an almost late-Sibelius concision of evolution at work here, with a surprising sense that tonality is not the placid glass surface that many who don't listen too closely might assume it to be.

Finally, we get the little-played Toccata for organ and orchestra, written to show off the Philadephia Orchestra's new organ, a gift of philanthropic Mary Zimbalist. If you like the organ mix with orchestra, this will tickly your fancy. It is played deftly and with musical imagination by Thomas Trotter in the lofts.

If you don't know Barber, this is a rewarding place to start. If you have been collecting the Barber Naxos series previously, then take heart, this one is another keeper. Five stars, not that distantly shining, almost right above us on a very, very clear night.