Review – Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs

Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs

Resonus, 2022
Dylan Perez, et al 

Review by Allen Ruch
20 July 2022

Since 1994, fans of Samuel Barber had only the Deutsche Grammophon Secrets of the Old set to represent Barber’s complete songs. Featuring soprano Cheryl Studer, baritone Thomas Hampson, and John Browning—the pianist who premiered Barber’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Piano Concerto—this collection has long been a “must own” album. Nevertheless, thirty years of the same interpretations can’t help become overfamiliar. Fortunately, this 2-CD set by Resonus has arrived to freshen things up. Even better, it contains nineteen “unpublished” songs overlooked by Deutsche Grammophon.

Spearheaded by pianist Dylan Perez, Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs brings together ten young singers from across the United Kingdom. The result is a welcome diversity of voices; more a Barber festival than a typical “complete songs” recording. Undaunted by Browning’s pedigree, Perez brings his own nuanced interpretations to these sophisticated pieces. His playing is less dynamic than Browning’s, but wonderfully fluid and responsive. The overall production is drier than the DG set, a welcome change from late 1980s/early 1990s reverb-friendly soundfields. This allows Perez to skillfully exploit Barber’s meticulously-placed silences and dramatic pauses.

Although the entire set is stellar, this review focuses only on the Joyce-related songs. We begin with Three Songs, op. 10. Barber set these three poems from Chamber Music in the mid-1930s. Like all Barber’s settings (save Dover Beach), the songs are arranged for piano and voice. They include Poems XXXI, XXXIV, and XXXIV, titled respectively as “Rain has fallen,” “Sleep now,” and “I hear an army.” Here the trio is sung by Scottish heldentenor and ENO favorite Nicky Spence. While his voice has more edge and bite than Thomas Hampson’s buttery-smooth baritone, he delivers a powerful and heartfelt performance. Lines like “Disdaining the reins with fluttering whips” and “Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil” never sounded more desperate.

Soprano Louise Kemény sings the two most mellifluous selections from Chamber Music, “Of that so sweet imprisonment” and “Strings in the earth and air.” Both are delivered in high style, with yearning and quivering vibrato. Joyce’s invitation to a tryst, “In the dark pinewoods” is sung by the dynamic Fleur Barron, a protégé of the peerless Barbara Hannigan. (Whose Lulu remains definitive for this reviewer, not to mention her “Gepopo” from Le Grande Macabre!) Considering this song belongs to Hampson on the DG set, it’s a nice change, and Barron’s dusky mezzo is well-suited to these ambiguous verses of love and death. She shadows the piano deftly, stepping her voice across the lyrics and departing key words with graceful curlicues—just a terrific performance. (Her “Love at the Door” is one of the highlights of the set.)

Of all the Joycean pieces, Nuvoletta is the most colorful, flecked with Wakean language, flickering rhythms, and soaring melisma. It’s also a song Cheryl Studer knocked out of the park; but Manchester soprano Soraya Mafi proves up to the challenge, her voice as nimble as Perez’s lilting piano. She leans into the Wakean puns through French and Latin, pronouncing “A dew! A dew!” as indistinguishable from “adieu” and chanting “From Vallee Maraia to Grasyaplainia, dormimust echo” with the perfect intonations of a mock “Hail Mary.” It’s a sunny, wistful delivery, quite in character with Nuvoletta herself. (Mafi also earned acclaim for her performance of Lucy England in a 2020 film of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone, written at Capricorn during the same year Barber wrote Nuvoletta.)

The saddest of all Barber’s Joyce songs is “Solitary Hotel,” the fourth song in Despite & Still, op. 41. The five-song suite was written during a period of depression following the failure of his opera Antony and Cleopatra. Adapted from the “Ithaca” catechism in Ulysses, “Solitary Hotel” begins with Stephen’s playful idea for an intriguing setting: a solitary, alpine hotel where a pensive woman flirts with a mysterious letter. The fanciful scenario comes crashing down when mention of Queen’s Hotel reminds Bloom of his father’s suicide. Dominic Sedgewick outlines Stephen’s scene with perfect clarity, telegraphing each sentence in his rich baritone. It’s a masterful performance of a difficult song, and his climactic “What?” is chilling.

A macabre song about a man who finds himself buried alive, “Now have I fed up and eaten up the rose” is Joyce’s translation of a poem by Gottfried Keller, a poem he first heard in a musical setting by Othmar Schoeck. The titular rose refers to the doomed man’s last supper—his own funeral corsage! A metaphor for artistic exile and creative decay, “Rose” is one of the last songs Barber wrote. It’s sung by Jess Dandy, a young contralto with a strikingly powerful voice. Sensitive to the poem’s religious imagery, Dandy invests the ironic hymn with liturgical plangency, her resonant voice transforming the confines of her coffin into the walls of a cathedral. I’ve heard over a dozen versions of “Rose,” from Thomas Hampson’s resigned sighing to keening recitals on YouTube. This version is the best: Dandy understands the essential weirdness of the song.

All in all, Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs is a remarkable achievement. The sound quality is impeccable, and Perez’s enjoyable liner notes offer the perfect blend of biography, commentary, and analysis. There’s one puzzling oversight, however: the booklet doesn’t print the lyrics for Nuvoletta. It’s a regrettable omission, as the song’s linguistic puns are intended for both the ear and the eye; not to mention the many neologisms—it’s not every day one encounters lyrics like “spunn of sisteen shimmers,” and “she tossed her sfumastelliacinous hair!” Nor is Perez a Joycean; his interpretation of Nuvoletta reveals an unfamiliarity with Finnegans Wake. (Oh yes; how dare he not read Finnegans Wake for the sake of a six-minute song!)

The Deutsche Grammophon set is unlikely to lose its status as a classic, but this set by Resonus is more than just a worthy alternative—I heartily recommend it as anyone’s first choice.

Additional Information

Joyce Music: Samuel Barber
The Brazen Head features several pages on Samuel Barber and his Joyce-related compositions.

Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs
The entire album is available for listening on YouTube.

Resonus Release: Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs
The Resonus page features sound samples, review excerpts, and liner notes.

Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs [CD]
You can purchase the compact disc at Amazon.com.

Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs [FLAC]
Audiophiles may download the 24-bit FLACS from Presto.

Author: Allen Ruch
First Posted: 20 July 2022
Last Modified: 25 June 2024
Joyce Reviews Page: Joyce Reviews [TBD]
Joyce Barber Page: Samuel Barber
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