NPRadio: BARBER’S ADAGIO: TOSCANINI, BERNSTEIN AND PLATOON
Like a number of classical music compositions, Barber’s Adagio is better known not as a singularly great piece of music, but as the hauntingly brooding melancholy back ground music in the movie “Platoon”. It is the music that filled the airways of America for hours following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, heard again as part of his funeral service as well as that of President John F. Kennedy.
That American experience and exposure to the music accounts for, in large measure for the words of music historian Barbara Heyman: "You never are in any doubt about what this piece is about…there's a kind of sadness and poetry about it. It has a melodic gesture that reaches an arch, like a big sigh... and then exhales and fades off into nothingness."… or from NPR…“I was considering submitting a Wilco song, or maybe a Radiohead song, or an Elliott Smith song, they're all great artists, and have some amazing songs, but I think they all fall just short of the mastery that I find in 'Adagio for Strings' is a perfect song. It's such a beautiful musical contradiction. It at once seems simple, blunt, with the almost pop music sensibility of repeated themes, and yet it's sharp and cuts deep, it seems profoundly insightful; it expresses the heights and depths of the human experience in just over 7 minutes. Unfortunately it's become a bit of a cliché. People should be forced to listen to the piece outside of the context of a movie." -- Listener Greg Carl
The link at the top of this post will take you to the consideration of Barber’s most familiar composition, to the listening experience of Toscanini’s first public presentation of the work, an historical performance immaculately preserved and presented here, forward to a click on “Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” on All Songs Considered” followed by a final click on” The Bernstein conduct of this musical masterpiece. This recording, though I have many, none bad, is my favorite recording. Enjoy. Ed.
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, November 4, 2006 · In November 1938, conductor Arturo Toscanini led the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the premiere performance of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." The concert was broadcast from New York to a radio audience of millions across America.
Celebrated for its fragile simplicity and emotion, the "Adagio" might have seemed an odd match for Toscanini, known for his power and drama as a conductor. But according to Mortimer Frank, author of Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years, despite the director's force and intensity, he was capable of "wonderful delicacy and tenderness and gentleness."
The year 1938 was a time of tumult. America was still recovering from the Depression and Hitler's Germany was pushing the world towards war. Toscanini himself had only recently settled in America after fleeing fascist Italy. The importance of the broadcast performance during this time is noted by Joe Horowitz, author of Understanding Toscanini: "Toscanini's concerts in New York... once he was so closely identified with the opposition to Mussolini, the opposition to Hitler -- these were the peak public performances in the history of classical music in America. I don't think any concerts before or since excited such an intense emotional response, and I don't think any concerts before or since evoked such an intense sense of moral mission."
The "Adagio for Strings" was written by American composer Samuel Barber when he was in his 20s. With a tense melodic line and taut harmonies, the composition is considered by many to be the most popular of all 20th-century orchestral works.
The NPR pages provided here have much to offer the listener by way of a little treasure chest of fine music.
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