Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
The Complete Songs
Leilah Dione Ezra (soprano), Elisabetta Lombardi (mezzo-soprano), Maruro Borgioni (baritone)
Filippo Farinelli (piano)
rec. 2021/22, Music Cavern, Perugia, Italy
Brilliant Classics 96514 [3 CDs: 139]

During his lifetime Samuel Barber published thirty-six songs for voice and piano, and all of these were assembled in 1992 into a DG box of his vocal works featuring the composer’s favoured pianist John Browning with Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson. In addition to the published songs, the two CDs also included a number of other previously unpublished and unrecorded pieces to make up what at the time appeared to be a comprehensive survey of Barber’s song output. The appearance some thirty years later of this new 3 CD set entitled “complete songs” brings a further nineteen items which have since been published by Schirmer (the composer’s New York representatives) despite the fact that it is clear that Barber did not wish at least two of the songs now released to see the light of day. Last year a set emerged from Resonus Classics which also described itself as the “complete songs” but managed to fit all the items here onto two discs only. Nevertheless those of us who had already invested in the earlier DG set now have to seriously consider whether the additional material now available warrants a new purchase; and those who have not yet made the acquaintance of a major American song composer have to consider which recording of the three now available they should investigate.

It has to be said that Brilliant do not make matters any easier on themselves by their signal failure to provide some fairly basic elements in the package. Not only are there no texts and translations included (perhaps excusable in a bargain release) but these are not available online either. There are encyclopaedic online sites available which do provide texts for songs, and very good and comprehensive they are too; but even the excellent LiederNet archive, which supplies a complete list of Barber songs published during his lifetime and a substantial selection of the posthumous releases, do not include all the tracks which we find on these CDs. Moreover some of the songs have texts which remain in copyright, and cannot therefore be found online at all unless the record companies undertake the necessary negotiations to provide them (as DG did in their original issue). Even more unforgivably, Brilliant do not even furnish such fundamental requirements as identifying the poets responsible for the lyrics. And how one is supposed to trace the text of poems simply entitled “Longing” (CD3, track 2) or “La nuit” (CD3, track 7) without even knowing who wrote them, God alone knows (they are actually by Fiona MacLeod and Alfred Meurath). The booklet, which devotes fully five pages to biographies of the performers on these discs (of the singularly uninformative kind that consist simply of lengthy lists of engagements), allocates precisely five lines of a lengthy five-page article by Andrew Starling to a description of the 39 posthumous songs which tells us absolutely nothing about the works themselves, or even why Barber apparently wished them to remain unpublished. This simply negates the whole point of what should have been an exciting and innovative issue.

What might have redeemed the new set would have been a series of performances that surpassed its predecessors. That would not have been impossible; although Thomas Hampson and John Browning were in sterling form for their DG sessions, Cheryl Studer had regrettably begun to exhibit those vocal problems which were shortly afterwards to curtail her international career. She maintained a secure command of the delivery of the texts, and an intellectual and emotional engagement with the music; but there were signs of unsteadiness and problems of intonation which might perhaps have been less noticeable in a less cruelly exposed medium than solo song. In this new release the songs for female voice are divided between a soprano and a mezzo, with the former taking the lion’s share of the proceedings.

What then might have just saved the day would have been performances in which the singers’ diction rendered the need for printed texts unnecessary. But unfortunately this is not the case. Mauro Borgioni, who kicks off the proceedings, displays a quite cavalier attitude to English vowels and an occasional infelicity with more basic pronunciation: for example. “brood” for “broad” in With rue my heart is laden (disc 1, track 2) or “wogged” for “wagged” in Bessie Bobtail (track 3). He sings very beautifully in the close of Sleep now (track 5) but then bizarrely assumes the role of the narrator in A nun takes the veil (track 7) which is surely simply wrongly allocated. For some reason Leilah Dione Ezra suddenly takes over for the fourth song in this Op.13 set, but her voice is shrill at the end (track 10) and her diction is no better as she consistently sacrifices the words to the preservation of the lyric line. She has real problems too, with James Joyce’s peculiar treatment of the English language in Nuovoletta (track 13) – this is one of those texts where having the written words in front of you is absolutely essential for the listener. When she hands over to mezzo-soprano Elisabetta Lombardi for the Mélodies passagères (tracks 14-18) the clarity improves, but now we are listening to French texts where we really need translations.

At the beginning of the second disc we come to Barber’s most triumphantly successful song cycle Hermit Songs, settings of anonymous mediaeval Irish lyrics adapted by W H Auden. These beautiful poems, whimsical and moving by turns, demand the singer’s real involvement with the words such as they received from Leontyne Price, who recorded the complete cycle with the composer at the piano. Cheryl Studer in the DG set also rose to the occasion here; but Leilah Dione Ezra comes within hailing distance of neither of them. She even misses the point of Promiscuity (disc 2, track 7) – “I do not know with whom Edan will sleep, but I do know that fair Edan will not sleep alone” – by delivering the Irish name as Eden, like the Garden. Wrong sort of Biblical reference, I fear.

The early songs which were exhumed and published posthumously are often very beautiful and appealing, but one can see why Barber might have perhaps have been reticent about releasing them to a world which had already failed to appreciate his more mature offerings. Apart from the two French songs allocated to Elisabetta Lombardi, they are entirely split here between Ezra and Borgioni, which does mean that there is not a great deal of variety of tone over nearly an hour of songs. The recorded balance between the singers and the responsive piano of Filippo Farinelli pays tribute to the engagement of the latter with the music, but it is perhaps unfortunate that the sessions for these discs have appeared on disc a full year after the Resonus set with a larger collection of individual singers providing more variety and also more reliable acquaintance with English especially given the sometimes-peculiar versions of the language that Barber and James Joyce espouse.

The DG set had one further advantage, the inclusion of Barber’s mini-cantata Dover Beach scored for solo baritone and string quartet and persuasively sung by Thomas Hampson; although the even larger-scale Knoxville was excluded, presumably either because it required larger orchestral forces or that Cheryl Studer was considered problematical.  The rival Resonus set includes both the larger pieces (Knoxville given in the tenor version with piano accompaniment); and those who are especially keen on the exploration of the byways of Barber’s song output will already have purchased that earlier issue.

One would have wished to welcome an alternative view of Barber’s song output, quite apart from the documentary value of the newly ‘discovered’ works that were lurking in the composer’s bottom drawer. But the lack of even the most basic and essential information about these novelties surely totally undermines the whole point of recording the pieces in the first place. Perhaps Brilliant may relent and supply the complete texts (and translations where necessary) online; but don’t hold your breath. Mind you, there remain apparently a whole wealth of further songs from Barber’s teenage years which remain unpublished; so there may well yet be more to emerge in years to come.

Those who like me love Barber’s songs and would like to investigate the unfamiliar material will either have to fork out for two discs reduplicating the DG set which they doubtless already own, or wait hopefully for Brilliant to release the third disc in isolation (which might be a sensible course). What they will be able to do about the missing information is anybody’s guess. Alternatively they may take refuge with the Resonus set; this includes some of the missing texts, but not all – those missing being those still covered by copyright. And the Resonus set does after all not only include two substantial additional items, but manages to get everything onto two discs rather than the positively extravagant layout here – which goes some way to offset Brilliant’s price advantage.

Paul Corfield Godfrey

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Contents
Songs published during the composer’s lifetime
Three Songs, Op.2
Three Songs, Op.10
Four Songs, Op.13
Two Songs, Op.18
Nuvoletta, Op.25
Mélodies passagères, Op.27
Hermit Songs, Op.29
Despite and still, Op.31
Three Songs, Op.45
Songs published posthumously
Ask me to rest
Au clair de la lune
Beggar’s Song
Fantasy in Purple
In the dark pinewood
Love at the Door
Love’s Caution
Man
Mother I cannot mind my wheel
Music, when soft voices die
Night Wanderers
La nuit
Of that so sweet imprisonment
Peace
Two Poems of the Wind
Serenader
A Slumber Song of the Madonna
Two Songs of Youth
Three Songs (The Words from Old England)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Strings in the earth and air
There’s nae lark
Thy Love
Watchers
Who carries corn and crown