De mille feux sees James Wright in collaboration with the Andara Quartet to realize four unique works. The first, written by Benjamin Britten at the age of 28, String Quartet No. 1, Op. 25 is undoubtedly the most luminous of his four string quartets. The Andante sostenuto begins with one of the most remarkable opening pages in English chamber music: the violins and viola are seemingly suspended at a stratospherically high pitch, like a trail of twinkling, distant stars. The remainder of the work takes us on a series of voyages between earth and the cosmos, between the rooted energy of the ground under our feet, the impalpable shimmering of the ether in which we seem to bathe, and the human aspirations that travel between the two. In 1936, Samuel Barber completed the String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, and he arranged its Adagio movement for string orchestra later the same year. The quartet was premiered by the Pro Arte Quartet on December 14, 1936, at the Villa Aurelia, at the end of Barber's Prix de Rome residency there. In its arrangement for string orchestra, the Adagio for Strings ultimately became Barber’s best-known work. Dark Energy, from Kelly Marie-Murphy, was commissioned by the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the CBC as the required piece for the 2007 competition. In a single movement, the quartet opens softly and simply. It explores and displays a variety of string colors and techniques, and it continually gains momentum, eventually consuming itself with its own propulsion. The final piece is James K. Wright’s own, a commissioned piece intended as a gift from Carleton University professor David Cray to his wife, Ellen. While “Ellen at Scattergood” is ultimately programmatic in inspiration, it is otherwise largely “absolute music” in the traditional sense.

The three works for violin and orchestra gathered here testify both to the versatility of Vadim Gluzman as a performer and to the richness and variety of the influences at play in American music during the 20th century. Like the text by Plato which inspired it, Bernstein's Serenade, from 1954, is a series of statements in praise of love. Musically it is typical of its maker, with allusions both to his own music and to works by Bartók, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, and with a hint of jazz in the finale. Composed some thirty years earlier, Ernest Bloch's Baal Shem turns to the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe, dealing specifically with aspects of the Chassidic movement. Its second movement, Nigun (Improvisation) is probably Bloch's most famous work for the violin, an attempt to recreate the ecstasy generated by fervent religious singing. Samuel Barber, on the other hand, was deeply fascinated by the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms, although this is not always obvious in his music. His Violin Concerto, which he began to compose in Switzerland in 1939, while war was breaking out in Europe, has been described as having 'a chastened and aristocratic classic style'. That violinist Vadim Gluzman possesses the musical convictions and the supreme command of his instrument to do justice to all of these works will be clear to anyone who has encountered his previous concerto disc, with works by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. The recipient of numerous distinctions, it was glowingly reviewed, for instance in International Record Review: 'The variety of tone, lithe, sinuous and febrile ... is truly exceptional.' Gluzman is here supported by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under John Neschling, a team that has demonstrated its versatility on a number of recordings ranging from Villa-Lobos' Choros to Liszt's piano concertos.

Samuel Barber's 'Vanessa' has long been in need of reconsideration. The Pulitzer Prize-winning opera is a remarkable study of sex, delusion and disillusionment. Enthusiastically received at its start-studded premiere (the director was Gian Carlo Menotti; the designer, Cecil Baeton; the conductor, Dmitri Mitropolous and the tenor part of Anatol was taken by the young Nicolai Gedda), it sparked controversy - some reckoned that the score, undeniably influenced by Puccini and Strauss, was too European to be a model for contemporary American opera. Leonard Slatkin is one of the greatest champions of the works of Samuel Barber. He conducted an all-star concert performance of 'Vanessa' at the Barbican last year - one of the few performances of the work ever to be staged in the UK, and the only one to assemble the calibre of cast worthy of this work. It received extraordinary reviews. It was from this concert that this recording is taken.

Essential listening.

Samuel Barber wrote his Piano Concerto for John Browning (1933-2003) who gave the première at the inaugural celebrations for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York in 1962. The work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has become the most frequently performed American Piano Concerto – Browning himself gave about 400 performances of the work. He also recorded it twice – in 1964, with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra for CBS. The first is on Sony Essential Classics SBK87948, coupled with the Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern and the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. He returned to it in 1991 with Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony (for BMG/RCA Red Seal). This latter brought Browning his first Grammy award. The present disk, when it appeared on MusicMasters in 1993 earned him his second for “Best Classical Instrumental Soloist without Orchestra”. In 1994 Browning partnered Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson in a complete recording of Barber’s complete songs on Deutsche Grammophon 435 867–2. Thus we can see that if ever a pianist was immersed in Barber’s piano works Browning was the man.

Barber’s piano music covers his whole career and the styles of the pieces employ almost as many different languages. Take his masterpiece for the instrument – the Sonata. Commissioned by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the League of Composers it is a tersely and cogently argued work. It employed twelve note technique, but never loses sight of tonality. It was premièred by Vladimir Horowitz. It’s a tour de force of piano writing and is a ferociously difficult work both to play and to listen to. It gives little respite to both performer and listener and needs repeated hearings to get to grips with its language. Horowitz recorded the work in 1950 on RCA Victor: 60377-2-RG coupled with Kabalevsky’s 3rd and Prokofiev’s 7th Sonatas. This is the touchstone by which all pianists must be measured. Browning plays this complex work to the manner born. Perhaps his performance is not as idiomatic as that by Horowitz but, like van Cliburn, he has his own ideas on how the music should be interpreted. Although he doesn’t quite make it his own – Horowitz can rest easy here – he makes a very persuasive case for the work and this is a superb performance.

The next biggest piece is the set of four Excursions – Barber’s first major piano work. They are based on old American songs and musical vernacular: the first movement is a kind of boogie–woogie, the second a blues, the third uses The Streets of Laredo as its melodic idea and the last is a square dance. Although lighter in texture and feel they are no less virtuosic than the Sonata. These are delightful pieces, unpretentious and easy–going and Browning is totally at home with them, making them sing and bringing out a little nostalgia as well. Delicious stuff.

The late Ballade was written for the Van Cliburn competition. It’s a hot-house affair which owes more than a little to the highly flavoured music of Scriabin. The composer packs a lot into a short playing time. Interlude I is a surprisingly big piece with big ambitions. Considering its early compositional date it is surprisingly mature and well wrought. Finally, the Nocturne, another Browning première of a piece by Barber. It’s a highly decorated work, full of filigree work. Browning has said that perhaps it is more of a homage to Chopin than Field. Certainly there is more of the former in its keyboard layout than the latter.

There’s little that can be said of this recital except that is essential listening and the performances are as committed as one could hope for. Browning’s was a major talent which was heard all too infrequently outside the USA so we must be grateful for his recordings. His major competitor is Daniel Pollack (Naxos 8.550992) and he gives all the works here plus the Three Sketches (1923/1924) and an arrangement for solo piano of the ballet suite Souvenirs. His disk is worth having for these two extra pieces but it cannot be considered as a sole choice for this music when this collection is so good. This is well worth having on the shelf both as a reminder of a great pianist and as an example of some of the most refined piano music to come out of America in the 20th century.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

Here at last we have a recording of Barber's marvelous Piano Concerto to rival (if not surpass) the classic Szell/Browning recording for CBS (Sony), a performance which that company inexplicably has managed to reissue everywhere in the world except in the one place that it should: the U.S. While Szell and his Clevelanders remain unbeatable in terms of rhythmic precision and disciplined ensemble, Marin Alsop and her Scottish players offer ample excitement and drive, while pianist Stephen Prutsman certainly compares favorably to John Browning's pioneering effort (his later, more sedate remake for RCA doesn't factor into this particular equation at all).


Prutsman puts steel into the music where required (the opening cadenza and much of the finale), but he offers a slow movement of great delicacy and tenderness too. He knows when to back off and let the orchestra have the spotlight, and together with Alsop manages a genuine dialog in such passages as the finale's second calm episode (music that's pure Prokofiev in its ironic wit). It's interesting how closely this finale resembles that of Ginastera's First Piano Concerto, composed at the same time, and both seem to be taking the finale of Bartók's Second Piano Concerto as a model. In any case, aside from Szell/Browning, there is no finer performance of this work available, and it's very well recorded to boot.


As for the couplings, the catchy Commando March plays itself, and Die Natali, a marvelously inventive fantasia on Christmas carols, receives a lovely performance. Why this charming piece isn't hauled out every December and played to death, as it surely deserves to be, is a genuine mystery. Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance features an excellent "meditation", brooding but not too slow, that yields to a vividly detailed but somewhat underpowered "dance of vengeance", just fractionally under tempo and lacking the ultimate hysterical frenzy (as in Munch/Boston) at the climaxes. However, given the overall excellence of the other items on offer, this isn't a major liability, and for the Piano Concerto alone this disc will be an essential acquisition for anyone who cares about Barber's music.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Samuel Barber began his compositional career as a genuine child prodigy. At the age of nine he knew that he wanted to be a musician, and a year later he wrote his first opera - or at least the first act, after which the cook, his librettist, ran out of ideas! He initially worked as an organist, and even though he later focused on other areas, organ compositions are found throughout his oeuvre. Rudolf Innig's complete recording of these works offer enthralling insights into the development of Barber's full and rich life as a composer. Barber generally displayed a predilection for fine emotionality. His last organ work is a chorale prelude to ''Silent Night, Holy Night,'' a carol also very popular in the United States. However, whether the floating 7/8 time and bi-tonal harmony really gets us into the Christmas spirit - now that is another matter!

Paul Spicer and his excellent Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir have been responsible for several fine discs already (review ~ review ~ review ~ review). I’m delighted to find their attention now turning to the choral music of Samuel Barber. This distinguished American composer had a great affinity for the human voice – he was a very decent baritone himself – and a discerning selector of texts. Those traits come out repeatedly in his art-songs and they are much in evidence in this collection of choral pieces.

Spicer has trained his young choir well. There are 26 singers in the group (9/5/6/6) and they sing with great commitment and no little skill. Occasionally the basses sound a little short of tonal depth – these are young voices, after all – but the only real concern I have is that, to my ears at least, there is some evidence of edge in the soprano tone, especially at higher volumes. However, there’s a great deal to admire in these performances, as I’ve found from previous experience of this choir on disc.

A few of the pieces were new to me. I don’t recall hearing Ad Bibinem cum me Rogaret ad Cenam previously. Like the Reincarnations trilogy it’s believed to date from the late 1930s. Whilst it’s good to hear it I don’t think it’s an especially memorable piece. Much more interesting, I find, are the three Motteto, which are settings of texts from the Book of Job. In his useful notes Daniel Galbreath observes that this set of pieces “is clearly a young composer’s exploration of styles.” I wouldn’t disagree but the writing is expressive and already the responsiveness to words, which was to be such a Barber hallmark, is well in evidence.

A few of the pieces that Paul Spicer has chosen are Barber’s own re-workings of earlier solo songs. The Monk and his Cat is one of the Hermit Songs, Op. 29, which Barber wrote in 1952/53. The music itself is thoroughly engaging. However, despite the skill with which it’s performed here I don’t really think it works in this format. In this arrangement one vocal part is assigned the melodic line at any given time while the other parts ornament it and fill out the texture. Sometimes they do so wordlessly, sometimes they articulate the same words as we’re hearing sung to the main melody. Frankly, it’s cluttered, especially since Barber retains the piano accompaniment. Much the same can be said of Sure on this Shining Night and that’s even more of a pity since that is one of the very greatest art songs of the twentieth century. Just to reassure myself I went back to the splendid DG anthology of all the Barber songs, curated by John Browning and sung by Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson. As it happens, it was Studer who sang both of these songs in that set. What a joy it is to hear Barber’s marvelous original inspirations sung without the regrettable accretions of his choral arrangements.

However, Barber’s arrangement of a third song, Heaven-Haven (A Nun Takes the Veil) seems to be the exception that proves the rule. This, like Sure on this Shining Night, comes from the Four Songs, Op. 13, composed between 1937 and 1940. The music lends itself much better to a choral arrangement; it’s suited to the homophonic treatment that Barber gives it and perhaps it’s not without significance that this is the only one of the three arrangements in which Barber dispensed with the piano accompaniment. The Birmingham Conservatoire singers make a splendid job of it.

His most celebrated choral arrangement of an earlier work is the re-imagining of the Adagio for Strings as Agnus Dei. Once again, I strongly prefer the original but a good performance, such as this present one, can often weaken my resolve.

The standout performance on this disc is the account of Barber’s extraordinary A Stopwatch and an Ordinance Map. This mundane, even prosaic title – the title of Stephen Spender’s original poem – belies the intensity of the subject, a poem describing the death of a combatant in the Spanish Civil War. And what a masterstroke on Barber’s part to use timpani to accompany the singers! Here the singing is first class and the timpani playing of Matthew Firkins is marvelously incisive – and recorded with tremendous presence by the engineer, Paul Arden-Taylor. This is a gripping performance.

The excellence of that performance is closely matched by the choir’s rendition of Let down the bars, O Death! This solemn, melancholy Emily Dickinson setting, which was sung at Barber’s own funeral, is sung with great feeling by Spicer’s choir.

Barber extracted some choral pieces from his operas. Under the Willow Tree comes from his 1958 opera Vanessa while two other choruses were rescued from the much less successful opera Antony and Cleopatra. The first of these, On the Death of Antony is for female voices. It features a prominent solo soprano part and I’m sorry that the soloist isn’t credited for she sings with great accomplishment. On the Death of Cleopatra is for full chorus. This is a tragic, grief-stricken piece and it’s sung intensely.

Most of the music on the program is unaccompanied but six pieces require a piano and the accompaniments by Ben Kennedy are stylish. The Birmingham Conservatoire Brass Ensemble makes a sonorous contribution to Easter Chorale. Here Barber holds back the brass until near the end of the piece and that’s well judged because the brass thereby have much greater impact when they join in.

This is another most welcome disc from Paul Spicer and the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir. As I’ve already indicated, the singing is very good and the repertoire choice is enterprising. Somm’s documentation is right up to the mark and the recorded sound is clear and present. More please.

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental
Soloist(s) Performance with Orchestra.

Setting texts for chorus or solo songs occupied Samuel Barber throughout his creative life. In particular he sought out English and Irish writers, many of whose melancholic and nostalgic texts aptly matched his own musically romantic persuasion.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce a thrilling first collaboration between long-time SOMM stablemates, baritone Roderick Williams and the Coull Quartet, joined by tenor James Gilchrist and soprano Sophie Bevan. With six world premiere recordings, On This Shining Night is a ravishing recital focusing revealingly on a 20th-century phenomenon: works for voice and string quartet. It takes its title from a James Agate setting by Samuel Barber (whose masterly "Dover Beach" is also heard), here in a sublime arrangement by Roderick Williams. Williams also provides arrangements of Barber’s "Sleep Now" and three Frederick Delius pieces from his Seven Songs from the Norwegian: the evocative "Twilight Fancies," vivacious "Young Venevil" and exotic "I-Brasil." They serve, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes observe, as companions to 11 songs by Delius’s close friend and associate, Peter Warlock, including the gentle intimacy of "Corpus Christi," the “mini-cantata” "Sorrow’s Lullaby," and unique free-recitative of "My gostly vader."

Composed for Williams and the Coull Quartet, Sally Beamish’s five-part Tree Carols offer striking, variegated settings of poems by Fiona Sampson in their premiere recording. Roderick Williams’ SOMM catalogue include the acclaimed three-volume Twelve Sets of English Lyrics by Hubert Parry (SOMMCD 257, 270, 272), Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hafez (Birdsong, SOMMCD 0633), and the classic English song cycles A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), which MusicWeb International declared a “game changer… in terms of our appreciation of Arthur Somervell’s songs”. The Coull Quartet has recorded a wide repertoire for SOMM. Their recording of Nicholas Maw and Benjamin Britten quartets (SOMMCD 065) was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and a BBC Music Magazine Benchmark Recording. Gramophone declared their recent SOMM release with Clélia Iruzun, Treasures from the New World, featuring piano quintets by Amy Beach and Henrique Oswald (SOMMCD 0609), “a delight”.

Natalie Labourdette (soprano) and Victoria Guerrero (piano) make up an internationally award-winning art song duo that has released its debut album on GENUIN. The track list includes 20th-century vocal music based around the experience of "la petite mort", as the French language refers to the climax of lovemaking. "La petite mort": this is an existential experience, the desire to "linger", deep loneliness, and happy union! Alban Berg, Gabriel Fauré, Samuel Barber, and other great composers of classical modernism created miniature masterpieces – and the two young musicians dedicate themselves to this repertoire with a great sense of tonal color and interpretive clarity!

The star of tenor John Matthew Myers is rapidly in the ascendent. His debut album, Desiderium, coincides with his Metropolitan Opera debut in Brett Dean’s Hamlet. Desiderium – “an ardent desire or longing, a feeling of loss or grief for something lost” – beautifully showcases Myers’ mellifluous voice.

His thoughtful program of works by American and American émigré composers opens with Samuel Barber’s yearning Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – rarely heard sung by a tenor – and transitions to Charles Griffes’ similarly searching settings of 3 Poems of Fiona Macleod, and Andre Previn’s 4 Songs for Tenor and Piano. What follows is A Letter from Sullivan Ballou, set to the words of a poignant letter by an American Civil War officer, by John Kander (of Kander and Ebb musical theatre fame). Rounding out the recital are 4 Walt Whitman Songs by German-born composer Kurt Weill, including the classic O Captain! My Captain! John Matthew Myers says, “Call me a big-hearted Romantic. Each song on this album conveys yearning, separation, loneliness or distance but also a sense of intimacy and longing for connection.” It certainly does. Desiderium is an auspicious debut album, and one especially attuned to our times.

REVIEW:

For his debut recital disc John Matthew Myers has chosen songs and groups of songs by five American composers, active during the 20th century. The common denominator is a feeling of loneliness, and it all stemmed from Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915, which is the only really well-known work in this album.

It goes without saying that the overriding mood is that of melancholy and gloom, but the texts and the musical expressions differ greatly, which vouches for a varied program. Barber’s Knoxville was composed in 1947 for a high voice and orchestra, and has almost exclusively been soprano territory. Since James Agee’s dream-like prose poem from 1938 is written in the persona of a 5-year-old male child, it’s logical to have it performed by a tenor. John Matthew Myers sings the many lyrical sections with soft beautiful tone, but he is also apt at expressing the desperation and sorrow in the work's crucial lines. It is a deeply felt reading.

Composed in 1918 The three Griffes songs, to poems by Fiona Macleod (William Field), were orchestrated in 1919. Like Barber’s Knoxville the orchestration has an attractive colouring that the piano cannot measure up to, but still it has its own attraction, and since it is the original it’s valid and gives the music a more intimate image, more chamber music like. I am happy to have both versions in so convincing readings.

I must say that André Previn’s 4 Songs for Tenor and Piano is a harder nut to crack. Composed in 2004 they are dressed in a rather knotty harmonic language. The mood is gloomy, also in the up-tempo last song, The Revelation. I believe that repeated listening might open them up, but at present I must content myself with admitting that the singing and playing are of the highest order. As far as I have been able to find out, this is a first recording, even though the liner notes don’t specifically say so.

The setting for John Kander’s A Letter from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the Civil War, is wonderful and gripping. John Kander is known, at least to Broadway musical enthusiasts, for his collaboration with Fred Ebb in Cabaret, Chicago, and other Broadway successes. Here, in a quite different vein, he catches all the shifts and nuances of the letter so sensitively. There are certainly echoes from his musical background, which in no way is a drawback. John Matthew Myers reading is appropriately sensitive.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 triggered Kurt Weill to set three of the Walt Whitman poems recorded here. He “structured the original three as a gradual decrescendo of militarism from the bullish opening to the wistful intensity of the final dirge”, as Julian Haylock says in his notes. Five years later he added Come Up from the Fields, Father, which here is placed third in the suite. Weill was a great admirer of Whitman, and said as early as 1926 that he was “the first truly original poetic talent to grow out of American soil.” The music is warlike and sturdy in the first song, reminding me of his style in the 1920s, the second song is a funeral march, and the whole suite – I wouldn’t call it a cycle – is deeply engaging.

John Matthew Myers can feel satisfied with his debut album, and he is excellently supported by Myra Huang’s accompaniment.

-- MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

Reviews of the discs that make up this set:

SYMPHONIES 1 & 2, ESSAY FOR ORCHESTRA 1

The First Symphony's 21-minute span seems over in a flash; the work has seldom sounded so grippingly intense and tightly focused. Alsop's emotionally expansive, let-it-all-hang-out excitement brings an unrivaled authority to this still comparatively neglected work. The way she builds the climax of the slow section following the scherzo alone is worth the price of this disc. Clearly Alsop has a keen grasp of Barber's idiom. The First Essay for Orchestra brings thrills of its own: its opening really broods, while the swift central development section passes by like a ghostly wind: superb. Finally, Alsop offers what is clearly the finest-ever performance of the much maligned Second Symphony. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra plays with passion. This is an outstanding disc for fans of Barber's music, and one of the finest releases to date in Naxos' American Classics series.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

CELLO CONCERTO, MEDEA SUITE, ADAGIO FOR STRINGS

Lyricism and obsessive patterns are finely realised by the RSNO, while conductor Marin Alsop shows a keen sensitivity to both scores and balances their rhetoric with the clean-edged clarity of their textures. In addition, her performance of the now-ubiquitous Adagio for Strings is a model of restraint, proving the saying that less equals more. Attractive sound, with a wide range and plenty of definition.

– BBC Music Magazine

PIANO CONCERTO, DIE NATALI

Here at last we have a recording of Barber's marvelous Piano Concerto to rival (if not surpass) the classic Szell/Browning recording for CBS. Prutsman puts steel into the music where required, but he offers a slow movement of great delicacy and tenderness too. He knows when to back off and let the orchestra have the spotlight, and together with Alsop manages a genuine dialog in such passages as the finale's second calm episode (music that's pure Prokofiev in its ironic wit). As for the couplings, the catchy Commando March plays itself, and Die Natali, a marvelously inventive fantasia on Christmas carols, receives a lovely performance. Why this charming piece isn't hauled out every December and played to death, as it surely deserves to be, is a genuine mystery. An essential acquisition for anyone who cares about Barber's music.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

VIOLIN CONCERTO, SOUVENIRS

James Buswell plays a mean fiddle, offering a nicely singing opening Allegro, a rapt Andante, and an impressively brilliant finale. Conductor Marin Alsop stays with him all the way, fashioning an appealingly fresh and rhythmically spirited accompaniment. Alsop and the Scottish National Orchestra [also give] an energetic rendition of Souvenirs and a sensitive reading of Barber's very rarely heard Serenade for Strings (his Op. 1).

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

KNOXVILLE: SUMMER OF 1915, ESSAYS FOR ORCHESTRA 2 & 3

None of the performances on this new release is less than superb; moreover, no one who has been using the Naxos series to build his library of Barber works risks being disappointed by this or any of the other releases. This new Naxos release is especially notable for its extremely rich yet transparent sound quality and for painstakingly shaped phrasing by the Scottish National Orchestra.

– Walter Simmons, Fanfare

CAPRICORN CONCERTO

This sixth and final disc in Naxos’s series dedicated to Barber and featuring Marin Alsop and the RSNO is worth getting for the Capricorn Concerto. Even had the rest of this release been comprised of scraps off the compositional workbench (something that is definitely not the case), the present version of Barber’s affectionate salute to his home, family, and the Baroque would deserve to be heard. It is the gentlest, most lyrical of readings, with poignancy in its more tender moments and bracing drollery in the rest. In its playfulness, energy, and lucidity, this version is the antipode of so many dryly academic recordings that have appeared over the years. The rest of the works on this release range from relatively well known to the hardly ever heard. In these pieces, the RSNO is again first-rate, and Alsop’s conducting a fine example of clarity, nuance, and balance. Sound quality is exemplary, and detailed. Any lover of Barber’s music will want all six CDs.

– Barry Brenesal, Fanfare

and praise for the complete set

"These are mostly excellent performances...The soloists in the three concertos—Wendy Warner (cello), James Buswell (violin), and Stephen Prutsman (piano)—are particularly excellent, even if they don’t efface memories of Stern/Bernstein in the Violin Concerto, or Browning/Szell in the Piano Concerto. Still, having all of Barber’s orchestral music (without chorus), including the Second Symphony, in a box is very handy, and I can’t imagine anyone who purchases this set having any regrets. Certainly it’s the most impressive achievement yet in Alsop’s discography, and a real feather in the cap of Naxos’ American Classics series. A major release." – David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Lyricism and obsessive patterns are finely realised by the RSNO, while conductor Marin Alsop shows a keen sensitivity to both scores and balances their rhetoric with the clean-edged clarity of their textures. In addition, her performance of the now-ubiquitous Adagio for Strings is a model of restraint, proving the saying that less equals more. Attractive sound, with a wide range and plenty of definition. - BBC Music Magazine

Includes work(s) by Samuel Barber. Ensemble: Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Conductor: Marin Alsop.