Search - Samuel Barber, Neeme Järvi, Detroit Symphony Orchestra :: Samuel Barber

Bathe in Barber's lush sound world, but don't expect great i

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/11/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a sampler of a wide range of Samuel Barber's orchestral works, this is an appealing album. His three Essays for Orchestras are all in one movement but are structured like small-scale symphonies (not necessarily with a fast movement first). It would be hard to distinguish the three as early, middle, or late. They all partake of Barber's lush melodic gift and the accessible "American" harmonies that came into vogue with Copland, virgil Thompson, and Roy Harris. The only other way to get all the Essays on a single CD is with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Sym. on EMI. Those are square, literal, uninspired readings, but, sadly, so are Neeme Jarvi's. You can turn to Marin Alsop, who did a complete Barber series for Naxos, but she divides the three pieces on two CDs and offers readings just as foursquare. Oh well. (To hear what can be done to enliven the music, Zubin Mehta and the NY Phil. crack through the Third Essay on the New World label.



The other items are also first-rate Barber, with two haunting excerpts from his ultra-Ucciniesque opera Vanessa and Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance. Jarvi wakes up for the latter, to some extent, and although he doesn't best Thomas Schippers' riveting version on Sony, the sonics are much better. In fact, the sound from Chandos is all that it could be and shows off the Detroit Sym. at its best. I'm baffled why Bernstein never recorded these works -- he chose only the ever-familiar Adagio for Strings -- and so we can only dream of what a great conductor could have done.



Jarvi's interpretations are good-enough, but I am giving four stars for the sound, which is several notches better than on the rival recordings."