Naxos
made an
excellent choice in Marin Alsop (pictured right) to
conduct these works. She understands that there is more than
what sheer drive can convey, and that the melodies need to do
more than speak for themselves. Her pacing isn’t overly slower
than it is in others’ hands, but her approach is broader –
releasing the sound world to let the lyricism fully bloom. Even
the chirping woodwind figures in The School for Scandal
Overture become a seamless melodic line, carefully shaped with
the cadence and inflections of the human voice. Instead of
simply exploding, the opening chords spread colorfully and build
in power – the musical equivalent of C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe
giving us the vistas of Narnia lying beyond it.
Essentially, Alsop has
turned most conductors’ interpretation of Barber’s works 180
degrees, and all for the better. She does not focus primarily
on the drama in these scores – a telling choice since Barber’s
forte was not drama, but lyricism. Dramatic moments do come,
but gradually, through the tension that is fueled from the
intensification of those lyrical elements. Alsop realizes that
the drama will come without prodding or pushing. Her results
sound totally organic, with an innate ebb and flow of conflict.
Also
flowing is a seamless and continual vocal quality – the
quintessential Barber whose passion for the human song never
diminished and was so much a part of his compositional and
personal nature. This was the quality that allowed others to
discount his music as passé in the last 20 years of his
life, which, literally, broke the man’s spirit – showing how
short-sighted and wrong-headed the classical music world was.
Many of today’s composers, such as Lowell Lieberman and Michael
Torke, are turning back to song and melody from more formalistic
styles that could easily trace their musical lineage back, in
part, to Barber.
Basically, what Alsop
gives us are miniature operas or plays. Dialogue builds upon
dialogue. Arias, duets, ensembles and recitatives continually
shuffle back and forth, with legato and cantabile linking the
notes not only into vocal lines, but also dramatic arcs and
counterpoints of conversation. Alsop presents Barber’s music
as a microcosm of the complexities and inherent tensions of
human exchange coupled with the innate quality of the human
psyche to sing.
The one composition that
does not come off well is the Second Symphony, but not because
of Alsop. Barber was right to withdraw and eventually try to
destroy this work. Everything about it feels forced.
And no wonder: Barber was trying to write an overtly dramatic
piece, a grand rhetorical statement – something totally against
his compositional nature. The freshness and organic quality of
the other works on this disc have vanished. What remains is
trite, tiresome and fatally incoherent. Movements simply lose
steam and peter out instead of growing to natural conclusions.
Alsop has been a fearless champion of this opus and tries to
pump as much life into it as possible. But sometimes, even with
the best efforts, a phoenix will never rise from the ashes.
You have never heard
Barber’s music as the true marvel it is until you have heard
this disc.
Official Website of Conductor Marin Alsop
