Barber Conducts Medea

Samuel Barber conducted three LPs worth of his own music for English Decca on consecutive days in December 1950 - his later suppressed Second Symphony (which I shared here several years ago), the Cello Concerto with Zara Nelsova, and this recording of his ballet suite, "Medea."

Barber draw the 23-minute "Medea" suite from ballet music he had written for Martha Graham, in the process adapting the music for large  orchestra. (Graham called the ballet Cave of the Heart or Serpent Heart.) Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the suite in 1947.

Martha Graham as Medea

In 1955 Barber re-adapted the music into a 14-minute piece called "Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance," mostly culled from I, IV and V of "Medea."

This conductor-led performance, utilizing an accomplished London pickup orchestra, was the first recording of the work, followed by the shorter suite on LPs from Boston and Charles Munch and from New York and Thomas Schippers. The sound of this Kingsway Hall production is quite good. [Note (September 2023): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

Samuel Barber