Customer Reviews

Barber: Orchestral Works Vol. 1 - School for Scandal/Symphonies 1 & 2

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I went into a local bookstore to buy a new Mahler 6 recording, but realized I only had 11 dollars left on my giftcard, so I disappointedly decided to search for something else. I came across this disc and upon seeing the price, I thought it would be worth a listen. This is without a doubt one of the best bargains I have ever come across. The School for Scandal is solid and provides a nice appetizer for the incredible First Symphony. There were several occasions in the First Symphony that I was so speechless, I could do nothing else but laugh. The wild conclusion of the first movement ultimately ending with a swift plunge blew me away. The soloist in the last movement plays beautifully and the conclusion of the piece is plenty powerful. Tempo is perfect throughout, never too brisk of a pace, yet never lethargic. A perfect depth of sound and brilliant playing throughout make this symphony alone worth the price of the disc. The orchestra plays with such warmth, but the players can also take off their gloves and hit you across the face when the music calls for it. I simply can't say enough about this one.

While probably just tossed in as filler material, I was actually blown away by the beauty of the First Essay. This is one of the most underrated pieces I can think of, as I constantly find something new within its deep textures. I can't seem to understand why this is the least famous of Barber's set of Three Essays. I actually much prefer it to the other Essays and would love to see it rise in popularity to get the attention it deserves. It is some of the greatest string writing you will ever come across and the long, sorrowful melody will stick in your head for days. I can't imagine it being played any richer than you will hear on this disc... simply breathtaking.

While not as popular in comparison to the First Symphony, Barber's Second Symphony is also very intriguing. Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra also do a fine job with this symphony. The strings are wonderfully icy throughout many passages and the brass and the thunderous timpani in the finale of this symphony are also worth mentioning. In one particular instance, it sounds as if the guy gave up on his mallets and is hitting the timpani with a sequoia tree instead. And as many of you out there know, there are very few things in this world better to drive a piece of music home than the sound of powerful brass combined with an explosive timpani. While probably not as good as the First, the Second Symphony still is a great piece of music worthy of a good listening.

Simply stated, this is one of my favorite discs that I own and undoubtedly one of the best discs on the market under 10 bucks.

This disc is by far the most beloved of my collection. Nothing has ever pushed me to the brink of emotional explosion like the First Symphony has as it is played here. Absolutely gives me chills. The chaconne of the final movement (though the symphony is played as one large movement) is haunting. I only wish I could share it with everybody. Now, that having been said, you'll likely find The School for Scandal Overture to be a little more accessible. It too is fascinating. As are the Essay and the Second Symphony, which is particularly well played. For the price, this is an amazing treat. As others have mentioned, this disc really shows that Barber was much more than a one-hit-wonder (referring to his oft-played 'Adagio for Strings'). He can really pack a punch, so to speak. And that's all I have to say about that.

Since I do not have the formal musical training which would allow me to comment on the technical virtues of this performance, I can say, without regret, that this is your best bet for the price. The First Symphony is a lush, one movement masterpiece. The Second Symphony, sadly disowned by the composer, is also worthy of further performance. And the First Essay for Orchestra and the School for Scandal are more than worthy fillers. The sound quality matches Barber's music for lushness. The price is unbeatable. The performance of the First Symphony, at least, matches that of a full priced version performed by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony and released on RCA. Romantic, elegant, emotional, and tasteful.

This CD is a great introduction to the music of Samuel Barber and a great addition for someone who knows these wonderful orchestral works. The selection of works is nicely representative with a particularly good performance of the Second Symphony (Andrew Schenk would be proud). Marin Alsop, a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and a conductor who has gained a lot of attention conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. It would be nice to see her as music director of the Ravinnia Festival.

Along with the Second Symphony, the School for Scandal Overture is well played with a good tempo. The recording by Thomas Schippers remains my favorite but Ms. Alsop turns in a good, spirited performance (it reminds me more of Schenk's recording). The First Symphony and First Essay are beautifully played with the brooding drama and quicksilver lyricism of these works emphasized to good effect. The recording is very good all the details of the orchestration are clear. It is a joy to have this disc even though I already have these works played by other orchestras.

Having read the astute comments by the other reviewers listed on this page, I'm amused to learn we all have different objections to this recording, though in sum we find it recommendable. My gripe concerns The School for Scandal Overture. Alsop chooses an unfortunately leaden tempo for this mercurial work and proceeds with a leaden stick through most of it. Only at the end do the orchestra and she seem to perk up. The beginning seems especially tentative in phrasing.

That said, I find few negatives in the rest of the performances here. I also own the Zinman/Baltimore recording of the Symphony No. 1, and while I remember it is as being a fleet, commanding performance, Alsop's seems its equal. The first movement, given a dutiful Allegro ma non troppo tempo, does seem just a trifle sluggish in Alsop's reading, but the other movements are very well done.

Nothing earthbound about Alsop's performance of Symphony No. 2, which recreates the fear of flying our men in the air experienced during World War II. If you don't know this work (as I did not when I came to this recording), it is certainly worth hearing. It's a troubled and troubling symphony, its airborne gestures, especially in the first movement, being both scenically captivating and dramatic to a T. The lovely Andante brings the only repose in the form of long-breathed melodies with a glacial beauty, interrupted by an icy tumult at its core.

The symphony represents Barber's most forward-looking work, besides the Piano Concerto, so it is interesting to note that in the Second Symphony, which Barber tried to suppress from further peformance and publication, he uses one of the motives that shapes the later work. The third movement of the symphony starts with this restless motive, though Barber doesn't explore it as thoroughly as in the Piano Concerto; he isn't the first composer to recycle promising material. But the third movement of the symphony seems repetitious and static through much of its course, unlike the first two movements. The dramatic peroration caps the symphony admirably, but by then the material of the movement has outworn its welcome, at least for me. Maybe that's the chief reason Barber rejected the work: It had a recalcitrant movement that he couldn't or didn't want to whip into shape. But this is just speculation, and I'm very glad to have made the acquaintance of this thought-provoking work.

Alsop and company make a compelling case for it throughout, as they do for the much more familiar Essay for Orchestra No. 1. Both have all the drama one could wish for, and I have no quibbles here about tempos or phrasing.

The engineer for Naxos' British Isles-based recordings, Tony Faulkner, captures the orchestra in typically warm, full sound.

The first 3 works on this CD are pretty standard Barber fare (assuming Barber is really all that "standard" in concert halls). So, given the dozens of recordings of these works, it's pretty clear that the School for Scandal Overture here is pretty weak, and the Symphony #1 and Essay #1 are very average. The School for Scandal opening should be strong, coherent, and driving despite its heavy wind orchestration -- it should invite attention to listen to the rest of the work. Here, we get a muddled mess. It gets a little better as it bounces along, but it never catches the zip this music should have.

The Symphony #1 and Essay #1 do a little better, but the climaxes are never as big as they should be. Listening to performances by Slatkin or Zinman or Schippers or any top-notch orchestra under a strong conductor shows that Barber really constructed some overwhelming mountains of sound into his music. The gigantic end to the first section of the Symphony illustrates this: what Slatkin gets as a pile-driver of force, Alsop gets a mere regurgitation of notes on a page.

But all of that is forgiven because of the monumental Symphony #2 that's on this disc. Why Barber decided this work should be withdrawn is beyond me. A very bittersweet wartime symphony that at times captures the image of tanks and troops marching down a street or the loneliness of flying at night, it is in my opinion his finest work. It is atypically dissonant and brittle for good-natured Barber, but is also the only work of his that truly has a dark core to it. Alsop really brings this work to life and given there are almost no other recordings of this symphony, this CD automatically is a must-have.

"Unashamed musical romanticism expressed in a kind of musical water-colour technique: clear, transparent shades... This is what one finds in the best of Barber." So said Colin Wilson in "Chords and Discords" (1963) about the music of Samuel Barber (1910-1981). The mid-1960s, when Wilson wrote, probably constituted the low-point of Barber's reputation; the atonalists had risen to their intolerant ascendancy and opinion-setters tended to worship at the altar of Elliot Carter. Bear in mind, however, that Wilson was defending Barber: "The early First Symphony is a singing, tunelful work that seems to express the vitality of young America more effectively than Harris... Barber is a genuine musical talent." Barber has triumphed (posthumously and in his minor way) over the post-war reaction against him for precisely those quality that Wilson admires. He wrote in an unabashedly romantic style, with roots in Tchaikovsky and Mahler, that established an immediate connection with listeners. Not for no reason did the Adagio from the First String Quartet become the unofficial funeral music for the passing of American presidents. The emotion is clear, it is obvious, and the articulation of it wastes nothing. Barber was oddly his own most severe critic. While serving in the Army Air Force in World War Two, he received the commission (1943) to compose a Second Symphony in honor of America's airmen. A few years after its premiere (1947), however, Barber withdrew it. He had established a reputation, he explained, as the composer of highly compressed works in a neo-romantic idiom, and the three-movement symphony struck him as formally out of character. (And yet he had already written the three-movement Violin Concerto.) After the composer's death, the score, thought to have been destroyed, turned up, and conductor Andrew Schenck decided to revive it with his New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The CD became something of a phenomenon. Since then it has been recorded a number of times. Naxos now gives us a CD containing both of Barber's symphonies along with the "School for Scandal" (1933) Overture and the First Essay for Orchestra (1938). Marin Alsop leads the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The First Symphony (1936) is so familiar and so oft-recorded that one hardly needs to describe it. Alsop competes against a fairly large field. Slatkin, with the St. Louis Symphony, achieves a weightier effect in the opening Allegro Non Troppo, but Alsop's Allegro Molto (the scherzo of this one-movement work), has a scurrying tenseness to it that I like. In the concluding Andante Tranquillo (a passacaglia-cum-finale), I find Slatkin more convincing. Alsop's build-up could be more graduated than it is. But this is by no means to dismiss Alsop's interpretation. In the Second Symphony, Alsop faces fewer competitors - the composer himself in a long vanished performance that has never made it to CD, Schenck, and Neeme Järvi. The Second is definitely a more ambitious work than the First. It is more "modern" in sound and more combative in character. Where the First employs a passacaglia for the finale, the Second uses, not quite a fugue, but an extended fugato. In the Second, Alsop equals the competition. She makes as good a case for the work as has been made previously. The RSNO has a feel for brightly colored music (they have been recording the Bax symphonies under David Lloyd-Jones) and they know what to do with Barber's brass-dominated, percussively underlined, textures. The First Essay receives an appropriately dark interpretation. The ghost of Sibelius hovers in the background. Are there any bad performances of the "School for Scandal" Overture? If so, I haven't heard one. Whatever its failing, Barber's Second remains a considerable work. This is a painless way to get to know it. Take advantage of the budget price.

A mixed bag.

Naxos has done the world a service by undertaking their American Classics series, although my biggest beef with them is the paucity of American ensembles. Why use other orchestras when American ones are available, and have (in theory) the music in their peformance souls? (or maybe recording in the US is just too expensive, then phooey on us!).

In any case, this disc's greatest value is in offering an inexpensive and excellent recording of Symphony #2--not that oft played and available recordings can be counted on one hand.

While the Overture and Essay come off well enough, I take issue with the performance of the first symphony, one of my favorite works. In I, Alsop seems to lurch about--I'm not sure what all those pauses mean, but if it's to lend profundity to the work, it isn't convincing. The playing of the strings, while adequate, doesn't convince, especially in some of the more motor-like motives, from which the mov't derives some of it's best effects. II is very fine; III and the concluding passacaglia is a mixed bag. Here the competition from Slatkin's performance (RCA, coupled with the piano concerto), one of the highlights of his recording career with St. Louis, is fierce. Slatkin, who can be a pragmatic and straight-laced interpreter, brilliantly faced the emotional onslaught of this music in his recording: I would find it difficult for anyone to not be moved by his performance. It is overpowering. Which leaves the very good to suffer, as is the case in the Naxos recording. Sure, the string playing here is delicious, and while the etherally beautiful oboe solo that opens III is very good, the St. Louis oboist just really shines. Slatkin builds carefully his climaxes, and while Alsop is no slouch, she doesn't touch the heart like Slatkin does.

A good overall disc with an excellent Symphony 2. Recommended.

Marin Alsop is rapidly becoming one of our major conductors: she now holds the post of Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony in the UK and guest conducts around the world. Fortunately for us she shows a penchant for the music of American composers and for the works of Samuel Barber in particular. In a recent guest conducting appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic she brought the audience to their feet with an impassioned, exquisitely detailed, richly romantic reading of the Barber Symphony No. 1. Though everyone knows Barber's near National anthem 'Adagio for Strings', his 'School for Scandal Overture', and his opera 'Vanessa', too few know the brilliance of his Symphonies. Here on one disc Marin Alsop delivers excellent readings of both symphonies in addition to the School for Scandal Overture and the First Essay for Orchestra. Alsop goes for the mighty sweep in Barber's lines, here calling for more power than the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the recording technicians can deliver. But careful repeated listenings prove that the values abundant here are in place and honored. True, the 'Overture' is less effervescent than with Bernstein or Schippers, but without the rush to the finish line the inner voices are more clear and caressed. The 'First Essay' may not have the immediate impact that Barber's 'Second Essay' has, but Alsop makes the piece sing more strongly than most conductors. Clearly Barber is in her blood and she will doubtless become the preeminent conductor of this important American composer's works. Note: Alsop recently proved that her passionate yet magisterial conducting gifts are not limited to Barber: her Tchaikovsky 'Francesca di Rimini' and her sensitive collaboration with Lang Lang (no easy assignment!) on the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in her Los Angeles appearance were immensely impressive. This CD is a treasure, especially at this bargain price. And what a fine way to be introduced to Marin Alsop!

Back in 2000, I was doing some medical locum work in Seattle and availed myself of a pretty good Tower Records store, where I found this intriging disc for only $4.00. Thought I'd take a chance. I've been pleasently satisfied ever since. I know nothing about Marin Alsop, other than she seem to have a lot of energy. Her take on School for Scandal is nearly hair-raising, with plenty of elan and passion. Schippers does a supurlative job with this and other Barber music, but Alsop deserves a hearing more than once. I am slowly warming up to the 1st Essay and given time, I may come around to the 2nd Symphony but, for now, I find it a bit tough. Kind of like Sibelius' 4th. The real gem on this disc is the Barber 1st. WOW!!! What a charge. Why don't modern composers, essecially American ones, write this kind of music these days??? 1937 isn't exactly yesterday, but it's not the 19th Century either. There is plenty of disonance and strife here to make any pure modernist happy, but enough, MORE than enough romanticism to bring even the most jadded critic to the edge of his seat. The technical demands of this work are formitable and the Royal Scottish Symphony is up to the task, and then some. Is'nt this the same orchestra with George Tintner and the Bruckner 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th? I wouldn't think, given the economy of Scotland, that titles like "Royal" or "National" make that much difference. I suspect the orchestras are virtually made of the same personel. A job is a job, laddie!!

I don't know if I'll collect any more of this series, Aside from numerous recordings of his gorgeous Adagio for Strings, I have nearly flawless interpretations of his Violin Concerto, with Shaham, reviewed here previously, the Medea Dance of Vengance and some other short works with Schippers, et al. Also, a fine recording. So Alsop is not the reason. Fact is, I would like to hear more from this lady in the future, and I suspect I will.
An exciting and nearly electrifying release. Add to your collection.