Symphony No. 1 / Overture to "The School for Scandal" / Medea Suite / Adagio for Strings

This album gathers four cornerstone works of Samuel Barber in landmark performances by Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, tireless champions of American orchestral music. The Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, a compressed one-movement work whose scherzo, slow movement and finale grow organically from the opening themes, premiered in Rome in 1936 and was revised for its 1944 New York Philharmonic premiere under Bruno Walter, announcing Barber as a major symphonist in his twenties. The Overture to 'The School for Scandal,' Op. 5, was Barber's Curtis Institute graduation piece, written at 21 and winner of the 1933 Bearns Prize, becoming his first work to enter the standard repertoire. The Medea Suite, Op. 23, derives from the 1946 ballet commissioned by Martha Graham, later revised as 'Cave of the Heart,' and reveals Barber's more astringent, dramatic side across seven mythological episodes. The Adagio for Strings, arranged from the slow movement of the String Quartet, Op. 11, received its immortal 1938 premiere under Toscanini and the NBC Symphony and has become the defining American elegy of mourning. Hanson, longtime director of the Eastman School of Music, premiered and recorded more American music than any conductor of his generation, and his Mercury Living Presence recordings with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra remain a reference document of mid-century American orchestral art. These performances, among the earliest and most authoritative documents of these Barber works, helped fix the Barber canon for the LP era and remain interpretive touchstones.