Barber's Complete 1950 Decca-London Recordings, and More

The UK Decca company invited American composer Samuel Barber to London in 1950 for three day-long sessions in which he recorded some of his major works. Previously on this blog, we've heard the ballet suite Medea and the later-suppressed Symphony No. 2, recorded on December 12 and 13. The day before, Barber had addressed his beautiful Cello Concerto, with soloist Zara Nelsova, which is new to the blog.

The other two Decca-London recordings are newly remastered in ambient stereo, as are the first recordings of Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Four Excursions for piano, and Violin Concerto, all of which come from 1950.

Details follow. The headings for the remastered works contain links to the original posts. Download links can be found in the comments to those posts, as well as this one. The older posts have been revised and include new photos.

Cello Concerto, Op. 22

All Barber's Decca-London recordings were made with the New Symphony Orchestra of London, which was, I believe, primarily or exclusively a recording orchestra. The site was the Kingsway Hall, plush acoustically if not in creature comforts, and a favorite of the big labels of the time.

The composer wrote his cello concerto for Raya Garbousova, who premiered it in 1946 with the Boston Symphony and Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned it on behalf of John and Anne Brown. When it came to record the work, Barber enlisted the 31-year-old cellist Zara Nelsova, who had recently moved to London and who came recommended by Gregor Piatigorsky. (Garbousova herself recorded it in 1966 for US Decca.)

Zara Nelsova

The composer Arthur Berger wrote in the Saturday Review: "The concerto stands high among the available works for the cello, and in the hands of so excellent a soloist as Zara Nelsova the idiomatic writing for the instrument spins itself out like silk thread (with only occasional strands of coarser material because the recording sometimes picks up the extra sounds of the fingers’ attack on the strings)."

In past years the Cello Concerto was not often heard because it was so difficult, but today there are at least 20 recordings available. This may be among the best, and the sound in ambient stereo is very good.

C.J. Luten's view in the American Record Guide: "A directness of emotion, a gratefully written cello part, a well thought out orchestral accompaniment are the memories this musical delight leaves."

LINK

Symphony No. 2, Op. 11 

The Symphony No. 2 was a wartime work, written while Barber was in uniform, and includes programmatic elements, as indicated by the title Night Flight given to the slow movement in its independent existence. Barber had revised the symphony in 1947 to remove its programmatic elements, but then decided to suppress it altogether in 1964, while retaining the andante as a separate composition.

Barber with score of Symphony No. 2

At first, the composer had thought highly of the work, and it's not hard to understand why. Reviewing this recording the critic of The New Records wrote, "this symphony is not radical in method nor approach, but uses forms both old and new, It is not easy to grasp on first hearing, but its message is worth repetition, and the chances are better than fair that this work will some day be a part of the standard orchestral repertoire." The last thought was overly optimistic, but the work has had a revival in recent years.

LINK

Medea, Op. 23

Barber wrote the Medea ballet suite for the choreographer Martha Graham. C.J. Luten quotes Barber as follows: “Neither Miss Graham nor I wished to use the Medea-Jason legend literally in the ballet. These mythical figures served rather to project psychological states of jealousy and vengeance which are timeless."

Martha Graham in Medea

The characters in the ballet appear both as mythological figures and as modern characters, as the composer wrote, "caught in the nets of jealousy and destructive love; and at the end reassume their mythical quality. In both the dancing and music. archaic and contemporary idioms are used."

In later years, the music was generally heard in revised and excerpted form as Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, Op. 23a, or today as Medea's Dance of Vengeance. (Barber had a penchant for revisions.)

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Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24 and Excursions, Op. 20

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is one of Barber's most evocative scores, notable both in its music and in the text by James Agee, excerpted from the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, done with photographer Walker Evans.

As I wrote many years ago, "This is the first recording of the work, done by the distinguished American soprano Eleanor Steber, who commissioned it and first performed it with the Boston Symphony and Serge Koussevitzky in 1947. This November 1950 recording is of the revised version for smaller orchestra."

James Agee

"Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is often considered a nostalgic idyll, but it is much more than that. In 1915, Agee was 5 years old, and the piece is a memory and meditation on an evening that summer, in the year before his father's death. Agee's words were set to music by Barber when his own father's death was near."

The LP also includes the first recording of the Four Excursions for piano, as performed with considerable panache by the young Rudolf Firkušný, whom Barber admired.

In addition to the sound being cleaned up and remastered in ambient stereo, this version includes the Agee text and NPR excerpts from a 1949 interview with the composer about Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

LINK

Violin Concerto, Op. 14 (with Copland's Piano Concerto, 1926)

For this post I've also revisited my old transfer of what I believe was the first recording of Barber's superb Violin Concerto, finely played by Louis Kaufman with a surprisingly accomplished anonymous orchestra as led by Walter Goehr in a 1950 recording.

The concerto may be the composer's most popular work, leaving aside the orchestrated Adagio for Strings. This is on the strength of the almost rhapsodic first two movements, which are followed by a relatively brief moto perpetuo finale that some consider a letdown, even though it is related to what has gone before and is an exciting piece in its own right, particularly as dispatched by Kaufman.

Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber

The coupling is Aaron Copland's Piano Concerto, 1926, which is an enjoyable jazz-influenced work although not as memorable as, say, the Rhapsody in Blue or Copland's own Americana compositions. There were various conceptions of jazz back then, and the composer's jumping off point would seem to have been W.C. Handy.

The Piano Concerto is fun to hear and is played to a turn by the young Leo Smit, a great advocate of Copland, with the composer himself at the helm of a Rome radio orchestra that can get a tad raucous in the tuttis. This is another first recording, dating from 1951.

As with all these posts, this now includes restored scans, photos and reviews.

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