Violin Concerto, Op.14
performed Jan 19, 2003

In the 1930s, when Samuel Barber (1910-1981) was being lauded in some quarters as one of the most talented American composers of his generation, the modernists in academic circles lambasted his music. Totally unaffected, Barber went on writing in his neo-Romantic vein.

An excellent baritone, Barber studied at the Curtis Institute and concentrated on singing. He composed as a sideline, but composition quickly took over as luminaries like Vaughan Williams recognized his early works. After Toscanini conducted his Adagio for Strings in 1938, Barber never looked back. He would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his opera Vanessa (1958) and for his Piano Concerto (1962). The bubble burst, however, with the failure of Barber's biggest work of the 1960s, the full-scale Shakespearean opera Antony and Cleopatra. The opera was revised by Barber's lifelong companion, Gian Carlo Menotti, and restaged in 1975, but still didn't find an audience. Barber had a spate of commissions in the early 1970s, but his writing tailed off at the close of the decade, due in no small part to the cancer that was to kill him.

Barber's Violin Concerto was commissioned in 1939 by businessman Samuel Fels for his young protégé Iso Briselli, who rejected the first two movements as "too easy." This seems strange today, when most listeners appreciate these movements for their dramatic phrases and colorful harmony. Barber followed with the finale, marked "Presto in moto perpetuo," which was written in a more modern vein and leaves the violin soloist frantically racing along a seemingly endless trail of notes. Briselli rejected this movement as "unplayable," though the work went on to a triumphal premier, played by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941, and is now regularly enjoyed in concert halls around the world.