Post by erik on Sept 19, 2015 16:26:11 GMT -5
A symphony that its composer tried to suppress during his lifetime because it seemed to him to smack of war propaganda, but which was resurrected after his death, is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight.
Barber: SYMPHONY NO. 2, OP. 19
Despite the fact that he was one of America’s most important composers in the 20th century, Samuel Barber could be every bit as self-critical as Johannes Brahms had been a century ago. This is borne out by the fate that was almost suffered by the composer’s Second Symphony. It was a work that he composed in 1942, shortly after having been drafted into the Army Air Force and being based near Fort Worth, Texas. The 29-minute work, comprised of three movements and richly scored, was meant by the composer to give the listener some of the sensation of flying…and, ironically, it was commissioned as part of America’s effort in World War II, which the composer himself was spared from actually having to fight in. The work’s principal innovation, at least in its original form, came in the second movement, when Barber, at the request of General Barton K. Yount, who had heard about the commission, agreed to use a newly-developed electronic tone generator built by Bell Telephone Labs; in the work, it was intended to represent the sound of a radio beam used to guide night flyers. In this form, the work received its premiere on March 3, 1944 in Boston, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by their long-time music director (and champion of contemporary American music) Serge Koussevitsky. Barber, however, revised the work in 1947, and replaced the electronic tone generator with an E-Flat clarinet instead. The successful Boston premiere didn’t lead to many more performances of the work; and the symphony itself was criticized for being a work of wartime propaganda (much like the works of Shostakovich and Prokofiev were being criticized in the Soviet Union for being “too Western”). Barber requested that the symphony be withdrawn from public performances, and the parts themselves be destroyed. But a written manuscript of the orchestral parts that escaped destruction was found in a warehouse in England in 1984, three years after the composer’s death; and it is in with those parts that numerous recordings of the symphony have been based on since that time. It is now fairly well ensconced in the repertoire of many American orchestras as a work that is both romantic and modern, and not at all the piece of propaganda that its critics claimed it was, or that the composer himself feared people mistook it for.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/NEEME JARVI (Chandos)
Included:
Barber: ADAGIO FOR STRINGS
George Frederick Bristow: SYMPHONY IN F SHARP MINOR
Barber: SYMPHONY NO. 2, OP. 19
Despite the fact that he was one of America’s most important composers in the 20th century, Samuel Barber could be every bit as self-critical as Johannes Brahms had been a century ago. This is borne out by the fate that was almost suffered by the composer’s Second Symphony. It was a work that he composed in 1942, shortly after having been drafted into the Army Air Force and being based near Fort Worth, Texas. The 29-minute work, comprised of three movements and richly scored, was meant by the composer to give the listener some of the sensation of flying…and, ironically, it was commissioned as part of America’s effort in World War II, which the composer himself was spared from actually having to fight in. The work’s principal innovation, at least in its original form, came in the second movement, when Barber, at the request of General Barton K. Yount, who had heard about the commission, agreed to use a newly-developed electronic tone generator built by Bell Telephone Labs; in the work, it was intended to represent the sound of a radio beam used to guide night flyers. In this form, the work received its premiere on March 3, 1944 in Boston, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by their long-time music director (and champion of contemporary American music) Serge Koussevitsky. Barber, however, revised the work in 1947, and replaced the electronic tone generator with an E-Flat clarinet instead. The successful Boston premiere didn’t lead to many more performances of the work; and the symphony itself was criticized for being a work of wartime propaganda (much like the works of Shostakovich and Prokofiev were being criticized in the Soviet Union for being “too Western”). Barber requested that the symphony be withdrawn from public performances, and the parts themselves be destroyed. But a written manuscript of the orchestral parts that escaped destruction was found in a warehouse in England in 1984, three years after the composer’s death; and it is in with those parts that numerous recordings of the symphony have been based on since that time. It is now fairly well ensconced in the repertoire of many American orchestras as a work that is both romantic and modern, and not at all the piece of propaganda that its critics claimed it was, or that the composer himself feared people mistook it for.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra/NEEME JARVI (Chandos)
Included:
Barber: ADAGIO FOR STRINGS
George Frederick Bristow: SYMPHONY IN F SHARP MINOR
