Samuel+barber

Quatuor Diotima - American Music: Steve Reich, Samuel Barber, George Crumb (2011)

Quatuor Diotima - American Music: Steve Reich, Samuel Barber, George Crumb (2011)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 366 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 197 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Chamber Music | Label: Naïve | # V 5272 | Time: 01:07:18

For all the agony as to the status of classical music in the modern musical landscape, the three 20th century string quartets on this fine French release can be said to have entered the repertory, with a reach that extends far beyond the U.S. They go quite well together, which is the first point in favor of France's Quatuor Diotima here; both Steve Reich's Different Trains, for string quartet and tape, and George Crumb's Black Angels for electric quartet feature an artificially enhanced string quartet, and even Samuel Barber elected to "enhance" his String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, by orchestrating its central movement and making it into the famous Adagio for strings. Highly recommended.
Roberta Alexander, Netherlands PO, Edo De Waart - Samuel Barber: Andromache; Cleopatra; Vanessa; Knoxville; Songs (1993)

Samuel Barber: Andromache; Cleopatra; Vanessa; Knoxville; Songs (1993)
Roberta Alexander, soprano; Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra; Edo De Waart, conductor

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 234 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 139 Mb | Scans ~ 52 Mb
Genre: Classical, Vocal | Label: Etcetera | # KTC1145 | Time: 01:00:40

Roberta Alexander’s outstanding CD of vocal music by Samuel Barber demonstrates the soprano’s understanding of the composer’s musical language and emotional content … The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic plays very well under the tasteful leadership of Edo de Waart.
Gil Shaham, LSO, Andre Previn - Samuel Barber & Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concertos (1994)

Samuel Barber & Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concertos (1994)
Gil Shaham, violin; London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 307 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 159 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 439 886-2 | Time: 01:01:10

This sparkling suite for violin and piano came into being when the composer had to adapt his incidental score for a production of Shakespeare's play to the impending absence of the chamber orchestral. The result is a brilliant piece for violin and piano, which the composer quickly released in a four-movement version. There are other recordings of the chamber orchestra suite in five-movements that duplicate only three of the movements of this version. Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist André Previn are ideal partners in this brilliant performance. The four movements allow Shaham to show four sides of his violinist's personality: He skips and plays in carefree fashion in the opening movement, indulges in the grotesquery and parody of the second, gets to play the romantic in the garden scene of the third movement, and dazzles with virtuosity in the final hornpipe. Previn's part is more than mere accompaniment; the piano often has a large part of the mood of the music and his contribution is, to use a word already employed here, ideal.
Joanna MacGregor - Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No.1; Samuel Barber: Piano Sonata, Op.26; Excursions, Op.20 (1991)

Joanna MacGregor - Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No.1;
Samuel Barber: Piano Sonata, Op.26; Excursions, Op.20 (1991)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 202 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 163 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Collins Classics | # 11072 | Time: 01:08:03

Older Ives enthusiasts may recall the First Piano Sonata in performances by William Masselos who played the work for the first time in 1954, the year the composer died. Odd, but familiar in Ives, for such a masterpiece to have to wait 45 years to be heard! Masselos made two recordings (nla) which established the character of this richly inventive work. The one by Noel Lee (on a Nonesuch LP—only available in the USA) made in the late 1960s is almost as impressive. Joanna MacGregor's recording is now a landmark since there is effectively no competition in the British catalogue: DJF found little to recommend in John Jensen's performance on Music and Arts (9/90) so it is best to compare MacGregor, who is certainly busy in the recording studios these days, with these earlier Americans.
Paul Barnes - The American Virtuoso: Philip Glass, Samuel Barber, Joan Tower (2007)

Paul Barnes - The American Virtuoso: Philip Glass, Samuel Barber, Joan Tower (2007)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 267 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 190 Mb | Scans included
Classical | Label: Orange Mountain Music | # 0036 | Time: 01:10:54

The American Virtuoso presents a recital by American pianist Paul Barnes. His third release for Orange Mountain Music, it features piano music by American composers including the world premiere recording of Barnes' transcription of Philip Glass's Piano Concerto No 2 'After Lewis and Clark' - the full version of which he also premiered on OMM in 2006 with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra under Ralf Gothóni. The focus of this first-rate solo recording are Samuel Barber's landmark "Sonata for piano" of 1950, described by Vladimir Horowitz as "the first truly great native work in the form", and his haunting "Ballade" and "Nocturne". And it ends with two colourful contrasting pieces from the mid-1990s by Joan Tower from "No Longer Very Clear", inspired by John Ashberry's eponymous poem.
The Duke Quartet - Samuel Barber, Antonin Dvorak, Philip Glass: String Quartets (1993)

The Duke Quartet - Samuel Barber, Antonín Dvořák, Philip Glass: String Quartets (1993)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 293 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 168 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Collins | # 13862 DDD | Time: 01:01:01

An imaginative mixture of the popular and the unusual. Barber’s only quartet has at its heart the famous Adagio for Strings: the latter is an arrangement of the second of the quartet’s two movements. That Adagio – which here benefits not only from the unfamiliarity of the chamber original but also from the Duke’s sensitively understated approach on their first recording for Collins Classics – is here surrounded by some captivating faster music (including a brief return to the opening Molto allegro’s ideas). And Robert Maycock’s excellent booklet notes hint at what those famous seven minutes of slow, sad passion in particular could really be said to be about: young homosexual love in the Austrian woods. Thirty years later, in 1966, another American in Europe, and still in his twenties, wrote his first string quartet, though it’s unlikely to be a direct reflection of love, this time in Paris.
Polyphony, Stephen Layton - American Polyphony: Barber, Bernstein, Copland, Thompson (2015)

Polyphony, Stephen Layton - American Polyphony: Barber, Bernstein, Copland, Thompson (2015)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 337 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 171 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Choral | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67929 | Time: 01:14:08

An all-too-rare new recording from Polyphony and Stephen Layton presents highlights from the choral repertoire by four twentieth-century American giants: Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Randall Thompson. Framed by Thompson’s understated favourites Alleluia and Fare Well, the programme includes Bernstein’s Missa brevis, Copland’s early set of four motets, and—of course—Barber’s inimitable Agnus Dei.

Gerald Finley, Julius Drake - Samuel Barber: Songs (2007)  Music

Posted by Designol at Oct. 7, 2019
Gerald Finley, Julius Drake - Samuel Barber: Songs (2007)

Gerald Finley, Julius Drake - Samuel Barber: Songs (2007)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 237 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 146 Mb | Artwork included
Classical, Vocal | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67528 | Time: 01:02:14

Baritone Gerald Finley's generous selection of Barber's songs includes two of his most familiar cycles, 11 individual songs, and Dover Beach, for baritone and string quartet. The songs all come from Barber's early period and range from "There is nae Lark," written when he was 17, to the Hermit Songs of 1953. Finley doesn't have a huge voice, but he can deliver plenty of power when required, and he has an appealing warmth and ease. His delivery is refreshingly free and unmannered, and it is ideally suited to the directness of Barber's songs. He shows wonderful sensitivity to the texts and makes even the most overdone songs, such as "The Daisies," sound convincing and newly imagined. The Hermit Songs are sung almost exclusively by women, perhaps because of the tradition that Barber established when he gave the premiere performance accompanying Leontyne Price, whose recording remains a gold standard. The texts, mostly written by Medieval Irish monks, largely reflect a male perspective, and Finley's fine performance ought to give courage to more men to take up the cycle.

Myrthen Ensemble - Songs to the Moon (2016) 2CDs  Music

Posted by Designol at Aug. 28, 2022
Myrthen Ensemble - Songs to the Moon (2016) 2CDs

Myrthen Ensemble - Songs to the Moon (2016) 2CDs
Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Peter Warlock, Samuel Barber, Elizabeth Maconchy
Camille Saint-Saëns, Joseph Szulc, Federico Mompou, Jules Massenet, Henri Duparc
Claude Debussy, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Fauré

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 320 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 186 Mb | Artwork included
Classical, Vocal | Label: Signum | # SIGCD443 | Time: 01:20:42

Described by The Telegraph as "the crème de la crème of young British-based musical talent", and praised in BBC Music Magazine for their "irresistible combination of arresting programing and vocal flair assembled around pianist Joseph Middleton", the newly formed Myrthen Ensemble brings together rising stars in the world of art-song and Lieder. This disc features performances by founder members Mary Bevan, Clara Mouriz, Allan Clayton, Marcus Farnsworth and Joseph Middleton. Joseph Middleton writes to introduce the recording: "The moon has, since antiquity, inspired artists, musicians and wordsmiths. The programme on this disc looks to its many characteristics for inspiration. The songs are at turns consoling, sometimes seductive in serenades and occasionally paint the moon as a threatening force through its extinguishing of the sun's rays. The moon’s silver beams cast their magic in music by Brahms and Schumann in the first of these CDs, and in the second, inspire the exquisite treatment of 'Clair de lune' by a selection of the finest French song composers. Short English nocturnal overtures begin each disc".
Gidon Kremer - Philip Glass: Violin Concerto; Ned Rorem: Violin Concerto; Leonard Bernstein: Serenade (1999)

Gidon Kremer - Philip Glass: Violin Concerto;
Ned Rorem: Violin Concerto; Leonard Bernstein: Serenade (1999)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 351 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 183 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 445 185-2 GH | Time: 01:18:30

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.