Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
3 Mélodies, op. 2
3 Mélodies, op. 10
4 Mélodies, op. 13
2 Mélodies, op. 18
Nuvoletta, op. 25
Mélodies passagères, op. 27
Hermit's Songs, op. 29
Despite and Still, op. 41
3 Mélodies, op. 45
2 Poems of the Wind
2 Songs of Youth
Fantasy in purple
Music, when soft voices die
La nuit
A Slumber Song of the Madonna
The words from Old england
Ask me to rest
Au clair de la lune
Man
Thy Love
Watchers
There's nae lark
Mother, I cannot mind my wheel
Love at the Door
Serenader
Love's Caution
Night Wanderers
Off that so sweet imprisonment
Peace
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Strings in the Earth and Air
Beggar's Song
In the dark pinewood
Who carries corn and crown

Leilah Dione Ezra, soprano
Elisabetha Lombardi, mezzo-soprano
Mauro Borgioni, baryton
Filippo Farinelli, piano

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) reste le compositeur américain de musique savante le plus connu de nos jours, même si son œuvre reste occultée par les langueurs de son célébrissime Adagio. Il est heureux qu’une équipe italienne s’empare de ses mélodies pour nous restituer une intégrale qui couvre la période créatrice de Barber - cinquante années de 1924 à 1972 - toute emprunte d’un modernisme sensible et nostalgique. Nous apercevons du compositeur américain le génie de l’appropriation et de l’érudition ; celui d’un style qui ne cherche pas la contemporanéité atonale mais plutôt un héritage musical toujours assumé. Héritage personnel aussi par la mise en musique de poème médiévaux irlandais « Hermit songs » ou de textes de James Joyce « Despite and still » et « Three songs » qu’il dédie à Fischer-Dieskau en 1972. En 1951-52 ce sera le cycle des « Mélodies passagères » de Rilke dont les deux dernières sont dédiées et créées par le duo Poulenc-Bernac – excusez du peu ! Ainsi de Samuel Barber, baryton émérite, nous comprenons mieux l’amour des voix, « Thy Love » en 1926 et « Serenader » de 1934, ou la filiation de mélodiste proche de Poulenc et de Britten… Si nous regretterons un français approximatif des poèmes de Rilke et un clic de montage dans « Départ », cette intégrale joliment servie à toute sa place dans une belle discothèque ! (Florestan de Marucaverde)

The songs of Samuel Barber offer the beauty of his output in microcosm. ‘Complete’ in this context used to mean the 47 songs gathered in a Deutsche Grammophon 2CD set from 1994, but there are 65 songs here, making it the most complete survey yet recorded. Most of the lesser-known and unpublished songs on CD3 date back to Barber’s student years, but he took up composing young, and was always inclined towards writing for voices and responding to poetry. He made his matchlessly evocative setting of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach when he was just 21 years old. However, by the time of the Op.10 Songs, Barber’s harmonies have thickened in texture and expressionist harmony: these are heroic numbers demanding an interpreter of heroic projection, another world away from the almost painfully confessional mood of the music which has made his name such as Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Nevertheless, they paint a vivid portrait of Barber himself, who had a fine baritone voice and would delight in performing his songs while accompanying himself at the piano. Barber could read Proust in French, Goethe in German, Dante in Italian and Neruda in Spanish, and his erudite choice of poets and poems reflected facets of his complex character: a restless melancholy on the one hand, and an impish wit on the other. His part-Irish ancestry drew him towards Joyce, Yeats and James Stephens, and his interest in his Celtic heritage prompted the writing of his best-known song-prompted the writing of his best-known song-cycle, the Hermit Songs Op.29. Much later in life, he returned to song (and to Joyce) with Despite and Still Op.41 and the Three Songs Op.45. Both collections are coloured by introspection and resignation, but they are masterpieces of the song-writer’s art. Among his many recordings for Brilliant Classics, the pianist Filippo Farinelli has made complete surveys of the song output of Berg, Ravel, Dallapiccola and Jolivet, in conjunction with colleagues who have immersed themselves in the idiom. Here he is likewise joined by a trio of Italian singers who show themselves at home with the wistful, changeable moods of Barber the song-composer.