BARBER: Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 14 (rev. edition, 1948); Commando March; Symphony No. 2, Op. 19 (orig. version) – Ruth Posselt, violin/Boston Symphony Orchestra/Serge Koussevitzky
Pristine Audio PASC217, 56:32 [www.pristineclassical.com] ****:
Pristine Audio and producer Mark Obert-Thorn here restore all of the extant work of Samuel Barber as led by Serge Koussevitzky (1876-1951), the conductor who championed much American music during his tenure with the Boston Symphony. The soloist in the Violin Concerto (7 January 1949) is Ruth Posselt, wife of concertmaster Richard Burgin.
Posselt performs the Violin Concerto of 1940 in a revised version making its world premier. Dissatisfied with what he called "an unsatisfactory climax in the adagio and some muddy orchestration in the finale," Barber revised the Concerto in November 1948, trimming measures here and there (especially in the finale), rewriting the last twenty bars of the slow movement, and thinning the orchestration in some passages. The recorded sound–taken from a microphone hidden in a ventilation unit above the stage in Symphony Hall!–has surprising presence and orchestral definition, especially in the battery section and harp elements of the score. The oboe solo in the Andante offers a plaintive introduction with the strings’ support, and a melody of rich, autumnal beauty emerges. The cadenza adds a decided color element to the proceedings, the lyrical tinge with the returned orchestra rather reminiscent of Bruch. A militaristic “modernism” pervades the last movement Presto in moto perpetuoso, clashing deliberately with the songlike character of the first two movements. Piano, snare drum, hushed tympani, and a series of irregular metrics add to the fiery and twittering mix, over which a virtuosic Posselt sizzles in the manner of a frenzied feline. The resounding last chord elicits an explosive applause from the BSO patrons.
Donald Lowe narrates the introduction to the Commando March (1943) for the performance from 12 February 1944 at Hunter College. The then Corporal Barber composed the piece originally for the Army Air Force Band, but he rescored it for full orchestra at the suggestion of Serge Koussevitzky. The piece communicates the militant patriotism of the war effort, and it might have well-served a movie like Errol Flynn’s Objective Burma! The brass writing, with slides and insistent sputterings between cymbal clashes, proves energizing – a solid rush of red, white, and blue.
The 1943-1944 Symphony No. 2 “Dedicated to the Army Air Forces” would seem to arise from those same impulses that gave birth to Marc Blitzstein’s Airborne Symphony of the same period. In his later assessment, Barber rejected the score as inferior and wished it destroyed, but posterity has retained it for our edification. The performance (4 March 1944) conveys a solemn dignity in the opening Allegro ma non troppo. A piano obbligato informs the secondary motifs, the woodwinds riffs rather jazzy and hectic. The lyrical theme bears no trace of war, but rather enjoys a bucolic affect that suffers intrusion from aggressive and metrically jagged energies. The sonata-form working out of these diverse gestures becomes quite animated, especially in the battery section, which includes wood blocks. The last page casts a tragic aura that transcends the timely qualities of the piece that would otherwise “date” it as anachronistic. More autumnal sensibilities mark the Andante, un poco mosso, almost an extended moment from the Sibelius Swan of Tuonela at first. The anguished, ecstatic chordal progressions mount to a kind of dissonant beatitude, a recollection of the Yeats line, “a terrible beauty is born.” The last movement is marked Presto senza battuta and grumbles and races briskly over a thunderous kettle drum in a style that invokes Antheil and Honegger at once. Percussive and jazzy, the figures take on some polyphony along with the jabbing color elements in the wind and string timbres. The brass have their field day, certainly, and ostinati ring busy somersaults on our collective senses. The piece ends with a sturdy fateful thump, and we know now that D-Day is only two months away.
— Gary Lemco
