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."

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.

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.)

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.

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.

American Music with Foldes and Winograd

Today's subject - as it often is around here - is mid-century American music. The sources are two albums that are not often seen. The first is an anthology of piano works by eight composers performed by an artist whom I did not associate with this repertoire - Andor Foldes. The second is the first recording of Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, coupled with a suite derived from three of Kurt Weill's American musicals, as conducted by Arthur Winograd on one of his many M-G-M LPs.

Andor Foldes Plays Contemporary American Music

I was surprised to discover this 1947 album of Andor Foldes (1913-92) playing American piano music. I associate his name with the music of his teacher Bartók and other stalwarts of the European canon. He was, however, a naturalized American citizen, having emigrated here in the 1930s, remaining until he returned to Europe in 1960 for professional reasons.

Foldes' 1941 debut in New York was devoted to Bach-Busoni, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Bartók and Kodaly, but by the time of his 1947 Town Hall program, he had added works by the Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and Paul Bowles to the mix, likely the items on this Vox album.

In addition to the three Americans, the Vox collection includes short works by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and William Schuman. These were among the first recordings of these compositions.

The album was also among the first from the now-venerable American Vox label. (There had been a German Vox earlier in the century.) The US company started up in 1945, and made this recording the following year, per A Classical Discography. The resulting set apparently did not come out until 1947, when it was reviewed late in the year both in the New York Times and Saturday Review. Both brief notices are in the download, along with reviews of Foldes' 1941 and 1947 recitals.

Andor Foldes

The album reviews were good; the recital notices were mixed. Foldes was praised for his accuracy, but at least in 1941, the recital reviewer found his sound hard and his playing loud. By 1947, this had moderated into the notion that his secco tone was well suited to the contemporary repertoire, borne out by these recordings.

Copland - Music for Movies; Weill - Music for the Stage

Conductor Arthur Winograd (1920-2010), once the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, made any number of recordings for the M-G-M label in the 1950s, when it was active in the classical realm. Quite a good conductor, Winograd these days is remembered primarily for his long tenure as the head of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This particular recording dates from 1956 and was made with the "M-G-M Chamber Orchestra," probably a New York studio group. The LP combines two appealing scores, one prepared by the composer, the second by other hands following the composer's death.

Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, which comes from 1942, assembles themes he wrote for The City, Of Mice and Men and Our Town. The best - and best known - are "New England Countryside" from The City and "Grovers Corners" from Our Town. I believe this was the first recording of this suite in orchestral form, although "Grovers Corners" had been recorded on piano twice - including by Andor Foldes in the album above, under the name "Story of Our Town." The other recording, by Leo Smit, is available on this blog in a remastered version. It is from a 1946-47 Concert Hall Society album Smit shared with Copland himself.

Arthur Winograd at work

Kurt Weill's Music for the Stage was arranged for this recording by M-G-M recording director Edward Cole and composer Marga Richter, whose own music has appeared here. The arrangers followed Weill's own procedure, utilized in Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, of employing the theater arrangements while substituting a solo instrument for any vocal lines. It works seamlessly for this suite assembled from lesser-known (to me, anyway) items from Johnny Johnson (three pieces), Lost in the Stars and Lady in the Dark (one each).

Contemporary reviewer Alfred Frankenstein pronounced the Copland suite to be effective and the Weill "trash," strange considering that the latter composer influenced the former. Reviewers were more to the point back then, and held (or at least expressed) stronger opinions.

Frankenstein also opined that the "recording and performance are of the best." I can agree with the latter judgment, but the recording is another matter. It was close and harsh, so I have added a small amount of reverberation to moderate those qualities. [Note (July 2023): these files have now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

By the way, Winograd had almost no conducting experience when he began recording for M-G-M. Edward Cole had turned up at a Juilliard concert that Winograd conducted, was impressed, and offered him a recording session. This anecdote is contained in an interview with the conductor included in the download. Also on this blog, Winograd can be heard conducting music by Paul Bowles.

Both these recordings were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

LINK

More from Philadelphia, with Ormandy and Stokowski Conducting, Plus Reups

Many people said they enjoyed therecent upload of mono recordings from Philadelphia led by Eugene Ormandy. So here is a new selection, with the notable bonus of two pieces led by Ormandy's predecessor in Philadelphia, Leopold Stokowski.

The source for these materials is the unprepossessing LP you see above, issued by RCA Victor's budget subsidiary Camden in the mid-1950s and ascribed to the spurious "Warwick Symphony Orchestra" for reasons known only to the RCA marketing wizards of the time. The "Warwick" is the Philadelphia Orchestra, I assure you.

One side of the program is devoted to the warhorse that inspired hundreds of B-movie soundtracks, Liszt's "Les Preludes." The other contains contemporary American music associated with the orchestra's home city, all in first recordings - works by Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti and Harl McDonald.

I also am reuploading two additional works by Harl McDonald and one by Max Brand, also from Philadelphia, that appeared here a decade ago. These have been remastered, and in one case newly transferred.

Liszt - Les Preludes

This 1937 recording was Ormandy's first shot at "Les Preludes"; he was to return to it in 1946 for the Columbia label. It is a straightforward reading, beautifully played by the orchestra. As with all these pieces, the recording quality is quite good. The 1950s transfer and pressing are much better than the cheap-looking cover would lead you to expect.

Barber - Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12

Samuel Barber and Eugene Ormandy

Samuel Barber was one of the twin wunderkinder who had been in residence at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute in the 1920s and who achieved fame shortly thereafter. The other was Gian Carlo Menotti, who we will encounter in a moment.

Barber's initial brush with fame was for his 1931 work, the brilliant "School for Scandal Overture," introduced by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Alexander Smallens. By 1938 he had been taken up by Arturo Toscanini, who premiered both the Adagio for Strings and the Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12 on the same NBC Orchestra program. On this disc we hear the Essay, usually called the "First Essay" these days, in Ormandy's 1940 recording, the first of any Barber composition. 

The conductor was to return to the composer's music just a few times in the recording studio, setting down the Adagio and the "Toccata Festiva" in the stereo era.

Menotti - Amelia Goes to the Ball Overture

Eugene Ormandy, Gian Carlo Menotti, Efrem Zimbalist

Menotti composed his first opera, Amelia Goes to the Ball, to his own libretto, written as Amelia al Ballo in his native Italian tongue. The work acquired its English name and translation before its 1937 premiere at Curtis, which was conducted by Fritz Reiner. 

The Ormandy recording of the overture dates from 1939, its first recording and apparently the first of any of Menotti's orchestral works. As with Barber, Ormandy was not often to return to Menotti's compositions on record; the only other example I have found is an excerpt from the ballet Sebastian.

Works by Harl McDonald

Harl McDonald and Eugene Ormandy

The composer Harl McDonald had close ties to both Philadelphia and its orchestra. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he also served on the orchestra's board and later as its manager. McDonald was a well-regarded composer whose work was recorded not just by Ormandy and Stokowski, but by Serge Koussevitzky of the rival Boston clan.

The three works here are apportioned out two to Stokowski and one to Ormandy. Stokowski chose "The Legend of the Arkansas Traveler" and the "Rhumba" movement from McDonald's Symphony No. 4. 

Leopold Stokowski in 1940

"Arkansas Traveler" was and is a familiar quasi-folk lick that dates back as least as far as 1847. McDonald's portentous opening could hardly be farther away from the familiar down-home squawk of Eck Robertson's famous 1922 fiddle recording. But soon enough the composer settles into a witty digression on the tune at hand, aided by concertmaster Alexander Hilsberg's masterful playing. Stokowski's approach is perfectly judged in this 1940 recording.

McDonald's "Rhumba" was presumably inspired by the dance that had become increasingly popular throughout the 1930s. The composer was a talented orchestrator, and his skills are shown to great effect in this superb 1935 rendering by Stokowski and the orchestra.

Ormandy is hardly less successful in his 1938 recording of a "Cakewalk" that forms the Scherzo movement of McDonald's Symphony No. 4. His orchestra could not be better in this piece, which again takes its cue from a popular dance form.

Reuploads

Today's reuploads also come from Philadelphia, involving Harl McDonald conducting his own work and Ormandy leading a piece by the little-known Max Brand. These come from two Columbia 10-inch LPs, both of which include the same recording of McDonald's Children's Symphony. The headers below take you to the original posts.

Music of McDonald and Brand

This 1950 10-inch LP couples McDonald's Children's Symphony with "The Legend of the One-Hoss Shay" by the little-remembered German-American composer Max Brand. The Philadelphia Orchestra is led by McDonald in his piece and by Ormandy in Brand's composition.

I wasn't crazy about the McDonald symphony either of the times I posted it. It's pleasant enough and very well presented, but when you put it up against such remarkable children's works as Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," you are matching skill against genius.

Brand's piece has something to do with a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. That aside, it's an enjoyable work.

McDonald's "Builders of America" (and Children's Symphony, Again)

Columbia decided to record McDonald's cantata "Builders of America" in 1953, using the 1950 recording of the Children's Symphony as a disc mate.

The "Builders of America" is a sort of lesser "Lincoln Portrait," profiling both that President and George Washington. Edward Shenton, a well-known illustrator, provided the text, which is plain awful in parts. But the music is good, and narrator Claude Rains is fine. McDonald conducted the Columbia Chamber Orchestra, which was almost certainly composed of Philadelphia Orchestra members.

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

New Transfer of Knoxville: Summer of 1915

I had a request for a reup of the first recording of Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and decided to do a new transfer instead. My first attempt was done in the early months of this blog, and because the original LP was noisy, I used a reissued edition that had added reverb. This time I went back to the first 10-inch LP for the transfer, and the results represent a substantial improvement and are closer to the original intentions.

The piano pieces on the LP are also newly transferred, and there are fresh scans as well. All the noise problems have been addressed and the latest version (September 2023) is mastered in ambient stereo.

Samuel Barber and Eleanor Steber

Here is what I had to say about the music when first posted:

"Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is one of the high points of American music. It is a setting of a prose poem by composer Samuel Barber's exact contemporary, James Agee. Both the music and the words are inspired.

"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.

Rudolf Firkušný

"The modest LP above is also notable for including what I believe to be the first recording of Barber's Four Excursions, in a jaunty performance by Rudolf Firkušný. These items are based on familiar idioms, somewhat akin to the Copland and Gershwin piano pieces that are discussed below. Composed in 1944, they also were recorded in November 1950 in Columbia's 30th Street studio in New York.

"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.

James Agee

"Agee places the themes of family, self, time, and place in a context that is at once extraordinarily specific and timeless, minute and cosmic; full of love for his family, the poem ends nonetheless with the remarkable observation that the members of his family "treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am." This unusual, rapt, evocative piece is set to music that could not be more right.

"Steber also recorded the Barber composition later for her own Stand label; an intense live version. This version is cooler, with Steber's ample soprano and cloudy diction making the interpretation seem a little distant."

I only want to add to my previous comments that the playing by the so-called Dumbarton Oaks Chamber Orchestra under William Strickland is fully equal to this extraordinary music.

Note (September 2023): the download now includes a 1949 interview with Samuel Barber about Knoxville: Summer of 1915, in an edition from NPR, which mixes it with excerpts from Dawn Upshaw's excellent 1988 recording of the work.

Piatigorsky in Barber and Hindemith

This is something of a belated birthday card for Samuel Barber, one of my favorite composers, whose 100th birthday was earlier this month.

To celebrate, we have one of his Barber's less often heard works. It is the lyrical cello sonata from 1932, in a performance by the great Gregor Piatigorsky. To go with it on this 1956 RCA LP, the cellist programmed the Hindemith sonata, which was written for him in 1948. Ralph Berkowitz accompanies.

This is a well played, well recorded LP of fine music, so I don't have much else to say about it (other than I wish Barber's music was played more often).

I do want to comment on the cover photo of Piatigorsky because it is so different from the usual covers for classical recordings of the time - and of our own time, for that matter. The progenitor of this kind of black-and-white, available light, mood photography is as much film noir as it is the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. In classical music, its closest relative is probably Robert Hupka's photography of Arturo Toscanini (below left), which did so much to convey the conductor's magnetism.

The cigarette smoking is another cue - then and now conveying a self-possessed cool. The ever-present smoke and cocked eye of American news commentator Edward R. Murrow (above right) is an example. Television at that time was largely a grainy, black-and-white medium.

But the late-night, seen-it-all attitude was perhaps best suited to jazz musicians, and the Blue Note label made something of a specialty of the genre. Below are three examples - Hank Mobley 1 and 2, and Dexter Gordon, pulled from many, many such LP covers.


This is a style that the folks over at the highly amusing site called Crap Jazz Covers call "make me look intense and moody" - perhaps well suited to jazz musicians and incisive commentators, less so to a cello virtuoso from the Ukraine.

By the way, if you are more interested in Piatigorsky than in photos of smoking musicians, his autobiography, Cellist, is available in full online.

Barber and Copland in Improved Sound

Continuing our series of favorite recordings from the first year of this blog in enhanced sound, we have here two first recordings of important American works - Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto and Aaron Copland's Piano Concerto, 1926.

The audible improvements this time out are not dramatic, but worthwhile nonetheless - reduced rumble and a lossless transfer. [Note (September 2023): this has been greatly improved and is now in ambient stereo.]

Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber

Here is what I wrote about this recording when it was first posted:

Here we have two superb works in what I think are their first recordings, and distinctive ones at that.

Louis Kaufman

Louis Kaufman was a stalwart of the film music orchestras and made quite a few records for budget labels. He takes a very personal and romantic view of the gorgeous Barber concerto - much different from the poker-faced approach that's normal in most music these days. He, the indefatigable conductor Walter Goehr, and their pseudonymous orchestra also do a great job with the finale, which usually sounds like an afterthought. The recording is from 1950.

Leo Smit

Aaron Copland makes an appearance to conduct his early Piano Concerto, which is from the Jazz Age and sounds it. It's great fun and very enjoyable in this performance by the talented Leo Smit, a friend of Copland and a superb interpreter of his piano music. The 1951 sound from Rome can be a trifle raucous in the tuttis, but the piano comes across well.

The Musical Masterpiece Society and its sibling labels made many interesting records. We've seen several already on this blog, and more are to come.

First Recordings of Barber and Copland

Here we have two superb works in what I think are their first recordings, and distinctive ones at that.

Louis Kaufman was a stalwart of the film music orchestras and made quite a few records for budget labels. He takes a very personal and romantic view of the gorgeous Barber concerto - much different from the poker-faced approach that's normal in most music these days. He, the indefatigable conductor Walter Goehr, and their pseudonymous orchestra also do a great job with the finale, which usually sounds like an afterthought.

Aaron Copland makes an appearance to conduct his early Piano Concerto, which is from the Jazz Age and sounds it. It's great fun and very enjoyable in this performance by the talented Leo Smit, a friend of Copland and a superb interpreter of his piano music. The sound isn't too bad.

The Musical Masterpiece Society and its sibling labels made many interesting records. We've seen several already on this blog, and more are to come.

First Recording of Knoxville, Summer of 1915

Knoxville, Summer of 1915 is one of the high points of American music. It is a setting of a prose poem by composer Samuel Barber's exact contemporary, James Agee. Both the music and the words are inspired.

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.

The modest LP above is also notable for including what I believe to be the first recording of Barber's Four Excursions, in a jaunty performance by Rudolf Firkusny. These items are based on familiar idioms, somewhat akin to the Copland and Gershwin piano pieces that are discussed below. Composed in 1944, they also were recorded in November 1950 in Columbia's 30th Street studio in New York.

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.

Agee places the themes of family, self, time, and place in a context that is at once extraordinarily specific and timeless, minute and cosmic; full of love for his family, the poem ends nonetheless with the remarkable observation that the members of his family "treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am." This unusual, rapt, evocative piece is set to music that could not be more right.

Steber also recorded the Barber composition later for her own Stand label; an intense live version. This version is cooler, with Steber's ample soprano and cloudy diction making the interpretation seem a little distant.

For this post, I have taken the soprano item from the 12-inch LP below (which has an excellent line drawing of Steber on the cover) because the source is much less noisy than the original issue. True to the usual form, the transfer engineer for the reissue has apparently added reverb. The piano pieces are from the 10-inch LP.

Barber Conducts His Second Symphony

While there is nothing identifiably "American" sounding about Samuel Barber's music, this work at least had a patriotic basis.

The composition originally had the title, Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces. Barber was a World War II flyer when he wrote it.

Samuel Barber with the score of his Second Symphony

This recording is unusual on a couple of counts. It is conducted by the composer, who made only a few other recordings as a conductor, including the Medea ballet and Cello Concerto, both at this same time as this recording. (He also recorded some of his songs.) Also, it is of a composition that Barber later suppressed and actually destroyed. Hard to understand why—it is a beautiful and evocative score.

There are a few modern recordings of the piece now, but this was the sole version for about 40 years. It was unavailable for most of that time, although it was reissued for a time on Everest records. This is a fine performance and good recording. [Note (September 2023): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]